Intermittent Fasting Easy Guide

Intermittent fasting is a pattern of eating that involves alternating periods of fasting and eating. It has become increasingly popular in recent years as a way among the people those who are concerned about their health and fitness.

Extra weight loss is the vital part of health and fitness, Intermittent fasting (IF) is gradually becoming one of the best weight loss process out there.

In addition, IF has been found to improve insulin sensitivity, decrease cholesterol, reduce inflammation, slow aging indicators, boost your immune system, and improve your skin, sleep, and focus.

Intermittent fasting may be done in a variety of ways, but they all rely on selecting regular times to eat and fast. For example, you might try eating only eight hours a day and fasting the rest of the time.

You might also choose to eat only one meal each day two days per week. There are numerous intermittent fasting plans to choose from.

What Is Actually Intermittent Fasting (IF)?

Intermittent fasting is a diet in which you go without food for a certain period of time each day.

Many diets emphasize on what to eat, but intermittent fasting focuses on when to eat.

You simply can eat at certain times every day when you practice intermittent fasting. Fasting for a set number of hours per day or eating only one meal a few of days per week can help your body burn fat. Furthermore, scientific data suggests that there may be certain health advantages.

Mark Mattson, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins, has been researching intermittent fasting for 25 years. He claims that our bodies have evolved to be able to survive without food for many hours, days, or even weeks.

Before humans learned to farm, they were hunters and gatherers who evolved to live — and flourish — for extended periods of time without eating. They were compelled to: Hunting wildlife and gathering nuts and berries took a lot of time and effort.

It was simple to loose weight even 50 years ago. Christie Williams, M.S., R.D.N., a nutritionist at Johns Hopkins, explains: “There were no computers, and TV shows were switched off at 11 p.m.; people stopped eating because they went to bed.”

The portions were significantly smaller. More people worked and played outside, and they received more exercise in general.”

Nowadays, television, the internet, and other forms of entertainment are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We stay up later to watch our favorite shows, play games, and talk online. We’ve been sitting and munching all day — and for the majority of the night.”

Obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and other diseases can be exacerbated by consuming more calories and engaging in less physical exercise. According to scientific evidence, intermittent fasting may help reverse these tendencies.

Intermittent fasting is a very effective way to prevent or cure Type 2 Diabetes.

How does Intermittent Fasting work?

After many hours of fasting, the body uses up its sugar reserves and begins to burn fat. This is known to as metabolic switching.

Intermittent fasting functions through increasing the duration between when your body has burnt through the calories from your last meal and begins to burn fat.

Intermittent fasting, at its most primitive, just allows the body to consume stored energy by burning off unwanted excess weight.
It is essential to consider that this is natural, and that humans have evolved to fast for shorter periods of time — hours or days – without harmful health implications.
Body fat is just dietary energy that has been saved. When you don’t eat, your body will “consume” its own fat for energy.

How does it works at its core?

When we eat, insulin levels rise, supporting in the storage of extra energy in two ways. Carbohydrates are broken down into individual glucose (sugar) units that can be joined together to form lengthy chains of glycogen, which is subsequently stored in the liver or muscle.

Eating food –> Increase insulin –> Store sugar in Liver/ Produce fat in liver

There is, however, a certain amount of storage space for carbs, and once it is spent, the liver begins to convert the extra glucose into fat. This is known as de-novo lipogenesis (which literally means “creating fresh fat”).

Some of this newly formed fat is retained in the liver, but the vast majority is exported to other fat stores throughout the body. While this is a more difficult procedure, there is almost no limit to the quantity of fat that may be created.

As a result, our bodies have two complementary dietary energy storage mechanisms. The first one is easily available but has limited storage capacity (glycogen), whereas the second one is more harder to reach but has nearly infinite storage space (body fat).

No food –> Decrease Insulin –> Burn stored sugar/ Burn fat

When we do not eat, the process reverses. Insulin levels decrease, telling the body to begin using stored energy because no new energy is being supplied by meals. Because blood glucose levels drop, the body must now take glucose out from the storage to burn for energy.

Glycogen is the most easily available source of energy. It is broken down into glucose molecules, which give energy to the rest of the body’s cells.

This can give enough energy to meet the majority of the body’s demands for 24 to 36 hours. Following that, the body will largely break down fat for energy.

As a result, the body can only exist in two states: fed and fasting. We are either accumulating food energy (growing storage) or burning stored energy (decreasing stores). It’s either one or the other. There should be no net weight change if eating and fasting are equal.

If we begin eating as soon as we get out of bed and do not stop until we go to bed, we will spend virtually all of our time in the fed state. We may obtain weight over time because we have not given our bodies enough opportunity to utilize stored dietary energy.

We may just need to increase the amount of time we spend burning dietary energy to restore equilibrium or reduce weight.
That is what intermittent fasting is.

Reference:[1]

In essence, intermittent fasting permits the body to utilise the energy it has stored. The key point to remember is that there is nothing wrong with it. That’s how our bodies are built. Dogs, cats, lions, and bears all do this. That’s what people do.

If you eat every third hour, as is commonly advised, your body will continually utilise the incoming food energy. It may not be necessary to burn much body fat, if any at all. You might simply be storing fat.

It’s possible that your body is storing it for a day when there won’t be anything to eat.

If this occurs, you are out of balance. You don’t practice intermittent fasting.