Intermittent Fasting: A Beginner’s Guide To Weight Loss

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Are you a health freak? Or wanting to become one?

The term ‘intermittent fasting’ shouldn’t be alien to you. Growing out of the shell of religious rituals, this specific form of dieting is creating tornadoes in the health and fitness world! Done the right way, intermittent fasting for women is touted to be the ultimate tool, which along with exercise can deliver miraculous results in melting away the stubborn body fat, bring about an improvement in the inflammatory markers! The Intermittent fasting methods have proved to make you gain oodles of energy. Thus, let’s understand all the P’s and Q’s of intermittent fasting diet.

What Is Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent fasting diet is basically a technique in which you go without food during fixed hours of the day. It can be of 12 to 16 hours of duration and one is allowed to drink sugarless tea or coffee and water during that period. It is simply a pattern of eating in which the focus is not on what you eat but when do you eat them.

How Does Intermittent Fasting Work?

Intermittent fasting methods have proved to show miraculous results in melting away the stored body fat without causing any of the harmful effects normally associated with fasting. The key to understand the working principle is to get enlightened about the fed state and the fasted state. When the body is digesting and absorbing food, it is stated to be in the fed state. This continues up to four to five hours of consuming your food. During this time, it’s almost impossible to burn body fat, because of high insulin levels in the body. Post this fed state, starts the fasted period in which the body absorbs the processed food as well as use it as energy. It can last up to eight to twelve hours after your last meals and has a low insulin level presence. In the fasted state, it’s easy for the body to burn stored fat and convert it into energy.

[Also Read: Fasting]

The working principle of intermittent fasting is simply to put your body in the fasted state by going without food for a minimum of 12 hours to a maximum of 16 hours to give it ample chance to burn stored fat.

The Intermittent Fasting Guide

Intermittent fasting diet in combo with exercise and diet restrictions can give mind boggling results. However, it is like any other diet method which can affect your hormonal health adversely if gone wrong. It is safe for healthy individuals. However, like any other diet, it is not recommended if you are suffering from diabetes, eating disorders,  heart conditions, are on a restrictive diet or suffering from any other serious conditions. In case you feel any kind of physical discomfort, dizziness, weakness, etc. for a long period, it is advised to stop it and seek medical advice.

[Also Read: Fasting benefits]

How To Do Intermittent Fasting

There are various patterns of this fasting and you can choose any. The most commonly followed methods are :

• 8 Hour Diet – This involves fasting everyday for 16 hours and restricting the eating window to 8 hours in a day. You can fit in any number of meals into the 8 hour span, keeping a check on calories.

• 5:2 Diet – A diet where you eat 5 days a week and do the intermittent fasting for 2 days. On days of the fast, calorie intake should be 500 for women.

• 24 hour fast – Where you fast from your dinner at 7pm today till the dinner at 7pm tomorrow. The end result is the same when you do it for lunch or breakfast too, but a 24hr window is the required gap. This can be done once a week after you get the hang of Intermittent fasting!

• Again, keep yourself well fed with food before going into the ‘no-food’ phase. One trick that goes a long way is to consciously drink as much water as you can to kill any hunger pangs or weakness.

Remember, you need to enjoy it and keep yourself stress free to really make it work!

Intermittent Fasting Benefits

For all you ladies who are yet to understand all this raving about intermittent fasting, let us highlight the top reasons and benefits to get you gunning for it:

• Apart from the obvious fat reduction, the diet has scientifically proven to lower the blood lipid levels, blood pressure, inflammatory markers like TNF, BDNF, etc.;,reduce oxidative stress and even reduce the risk of cancer.

• Intermittent fasting methods also improves your body metabolic and fat burning capacity, increases the cell building and repair capacity as well as increases secretion of the growth hormone.

• The overall effect is you finding a better control over your appetite, hunger pangs, lowering of your blood sugar levels and an overall improved health with a higher burst of energy!

Finally, we can conclude that intermittent fasting might be the ultimate tool you require to imbibe in your healthy lifestyle for an awesome and jaw dropping figure and fantastic health!

DISCLAIMER: Please consult your dietitian/doctor before following the above tips!