#IntermittentFasting #FastingBenefits #ScienceBehindFasting #IntermittentFastingWorks #HealthBenefits
If you’re interested in improving your health and potentially shedding some extra pounds, you may have come across the concept of intermittent fasting. But what exactly is intermittent fasting, and how does it work? 🤔 In this article, we’ll dive into the fundamental science behind intermittent fasting and explore how it can benefit your body.
## What is Intermittent Fasting?
Intermittent fasting is not a diet, but rather a pattern of eating. It involves cycling between periods of eating and fasting, with no specific foods off-limits. There are several different methods of intermittent fasting, including:
1. The 16/8 method: This involves fasting for 16 hours each day and eating all your meals within an 8-hour window.
2. The 5:2 method: This method involves eating normally for five days of the week and restricting calorie intake to 500-600 calories on the other two non-consecutive days.
## The Science Behind Intermittent Fasting
### Insulin Sensitivity
When you eat, your body releases insulin to help regulate your blood sugar levels. Over time, consuming high amounts of carbohydrates and sugar can lead to insulin resistance, which is a precursor to type 2 diabetes. Intermittent fasting can improve insulin sensitivity, reducing the risk of developing diabetes.
### Cellular Repair and Autophagy
During fasting periods, your body initiates a process called autophagy, which is the body’s way of cleaning out damaged cells and regenerating new ones. This process can potentially help protect against diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s.
### Hormonal Changes
Intermittent fasting can lead to beneficial changes in several hormones, including increased levels of norepinephrine, which can boost metabolism, and increased levels of growth hormone, which can aid in fat loss and muscle gain.
### Gene Expression
Intermittent fasting can also alter the function of genes related to longevity and protection against disease, potentially leading to a longer and healthier lifespan.
## How Does Intermittent Fasting Work?
### Switching Your Body’s Energy Source
When you fast, your body depletes its glycogen stores and starts to use stored fat as its primary source of energy. This can lead to weight loss and a reduction in body fat percentage.
### Increased Metabolic Rate
Intermittent fasting can boost your metabolism by increasing levels of norepinephrine, a hormone that helps the body burn fat more efficiently.
### Reduction in Caloric Intake
By limiting the time frame in which you can eat, intermittent fasting can naturally lead to a decrease in overall caloric intake, which is essential for weight loss.
### Improved Brain Function
Studies have shown that intermittent fasting can improve various brain functions, including cognitive function, brain plasticity, and overall brain health.
## Tips for Getting Started with Intermittent Fasting
If you’re interested in giving intermittent fasting a try, here are some tips for getting started:
1. Start Slow: Begin by gradually increasing the length of time you fast until you find a fasting schedule that works for you.
2. Stay Hydrated: Drink plenty of water during your fasting periods to stay hydrated and reduce feelings of hunger.
3. Be Consistent: Try to stick to a consistent fasting schedule to help your body adapt to the changes.
4. Listen to Your Body: If you feel lightheaded, dizzy, or excessively hungry, it’s important to listen to your body and break your fast if needed.
In conclusion, intermittent fasting is a scientifically backed method of eating that can offer a wide range of health benefits, including weight loss, improved metabolic health, and potentially even a longer lifespan. If you’re considering trying intermittent fasting, be sure to consult with a healthcare professional, especially if you have any underlying health conditions. With the right approach, intermittent fasting could be the key to unlocking a healthier, happier you.
Calories in, calories out. You eat more in one meal but you eat less overall for the day (in theory).
Your body goes through different digestive/processing stages that are triggered when you eat. So if you start fasting at 9pm the process starts, but if you eat a snack at 10pm the process starts all over again.
The first thing is your blood sugar rises as food is absorbed, and energy is stored.
Second is glucose is used for energy, once it is used up, the body starts using stored fat.
After 11+ hours, all the immediate glucose is used from the food and you’re just burning fat.
After 14+ hours you enter ketosis and start producing ketones which provide energy to organs and the brain. A lot of people have more focus at this point in the fast.
You just eat less calories overall mostly because there’s a limited time for you to eat and you don’t get hungry enough to compensate for all the calories you would’ve eaten if you hadn’t fasted.
Weight loss is about calories in vs calories out. By limiting eating to set hours, calories in are restricted. As such, intermittent fasting is an effective method of weight loss. Relative to other calorie restriction systems, it may be easier to adopt since a practitioner can eat “whatever they want” during eating hours.
It is another fad diet trend. Losing weight means you need to change your eating habits overall and maintain that. There is no special gimmick to losing weight, and it takes a lifetime commitment to lose the weight and not gain it back.
It’s a way of approaching CICO (calories in calories out). If you can pick a time of the day where you don’t like to eat, then skip the meal. You’re unlikely to match the calorie intake with the remaining meal(s), so less calories in, but without a huge loss of quality of life (you didn’t like to eat at the tine anyway).
It works very well if you skip some garbage food you just felt obliged to it.
ELI5: eat all you can and then go outdoors
Intermittent Fasting (IF) is a diet protocol that works by limiting the window someone will eat. By theory if limiting your food intake to a set hourly range, you should be eating less than before. This reduction in calories would then cause weightloss.
Now the problem with IF or other restrictive diet protocols is the possible issue of binge eating within the range of the restriction. The difficulty in any diet protocol is very much the battle of hunger signaling and psychological cues that occurs from changing dietary habits. Our body loves homeostasis (staying in “balance”) and by reducing intake (or limiting a specific macro) the brain will fight that change because that change counteracts homeostasis.
It’s always important to consult your doctor and/or a dietary professional before changing dietary intake if possible. Incorporate increased non-exercise activity (stand up at your desk, more walking, use stairs instead of an elevator) as well as use exercise as a way to help influence a positive outlook towards your health goals.
Eating food causes blood sugar levels to rise. Increased blood sugar causes insulin levels to rise. Increased insulin levels signal the liver and muscles to start taking in blood sugar to convert it to glycogen, and signals fat cells to convert blood sugar into fat. Eventually, blood sugar levels decrease, which causes insulin levels to decrease. Once insulin levels get low enough, the liver, muscles, and fat cells begin to convert their stored energy (glycogen and fat) back into a form that can be metabolized by the rest of the body.
IF supposes that human physiology is adapted to spend a significant amount of time in the low insulin state, since we evolved in an environment where food was not always readily available. It claims that our modern dietary habits cause us to be in a constant state of elevated insulin levels, which then lead to things like insulin resistance, diabetes, and obesity. IF attempts to replicate an environment of food scarcity by limiting the period of time one is allowed to eat (8 hours a day is common), which causes you to spend more time in a low insulin state.
tl;dr – It’s an attempt to keep insulin levels as low as possible for as long as possible to allow more fat to be broken down for metabolization.
most people will eat from the time the wake up till they go to sleep. That’s a very big window to consume calories.
By narrowing the window to only 4 hours a day you Can drastically reduce your calories.
However a lot of people who try this end up eating their entire daily calories intake in that window thereby defeating the whole purpose.
The thought process makes sense. I’m fairly certain I heard this on the Joe Rogan podcast so take the validity with a grain of salt.
When humans were still hunter gatherers we didn’t have three square meals a day. You scouted your food and then ate it. Realistically you’re only getting one meal a day. That is what the body was designed to work with and the fad diet is an attempt to recreate that. From that point its calories in and calories out. It’s hard to overeat when you have a short window in the day to eat.
It causes you to eat less, and is easier to do than counting calories. Eating less means you lose weight.
It cuts out most snacks. It cut’s out almost everything except for the meal at 12 and at 16/18. Before and after you aren’t allowed to eat, inbetween you are still full from the first big meal and you know in so and so hours I will eat again anyway.
It is easier to keep to. What would often happen to me, is that I wanted to snack something. But because I knew I could eat it at that time it made it easier to wait. When the time came, I had already forgotten about it, and anyway it was time for the big meal. So I would just not eat the snack.
In general hunger was easier to handle. I knew how long I had to hold out. It was easier to decide if I eat something or not. If you have no system, you never know whether it is OK to eat something. And you can always convince yourself that it is fine.
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It also helps many people (me included) to realize that we have to adjust our diet, for foods that are more satiating. The goal should be to eat different stuff to minimize your hunger.
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In the end counting calories is better. But intermitten fasting (or even stricter, only eat 2 meals of the day, one at 12 one at 18 and nothing intbetween.) is easier to implement. You can start right now, and it’s very easy. And it brought me to an acceptable weightlevel I would say (I lost 10 kilo).
I was still slightly overweight, but any further I could only get with calorie counting (which is annoying and prone to getting stopped). But the end goal of calorie counting should also be, to change and realize what you eat. You have to adapt your eating choices for more satiating foods, to not feel hunger while keeping under your limit. I trains your body to like the better foods. You get used to eating them.
At some point that I personally have not reached, you can stop counting calories and your body is used to the “right” diet.
An additional benefit: the body starts to tap into its own reserves if food supply goes low. It basically starts to digest itself. Which seems to help in replacing old and potentially sick cells with new ones. It’s basically a cleaning mechanism for our body to get rid of old stuff to make place for new stuff.
The fundamental science is “you end up eating less”.
It works because you end up eating less.
The only things that allow you to lose weight are “eat less” and “move more”. Ideally do both. Intermittent fasting is just a way to end up doing the “eat less” bit.
Most of the replies are focused on fat loss, intermittent fasting is actually crap for that compared to a proper diet and exercise. And really anyone I’ve met/heard that uses intermittent fasting for fat loss, is just looking for the easy button and rarely does it work out well, sometimes it worse because they overcompensate and eat more calories and less nutritious food.
The real “magic” is autophagy, it causes your body to “clean up and repair” all over the body, there is a significant change in hormones and enzymes that lead to cellular repair and regeneration.
Honestly it works because it’s harder to eat a days worth of calories in a few hours than throughout a whole day. The other reasons people are staying in the comments are marginal at best, and I advice you do look at the research instead of trusting these people (me included) right away.
Most of the so called science behind intermittent fasting (such as all the various points made about insuline, blood sugar, ketosis and autophagy) is junk backed up by dubious or no evidence that has nothing to do with making intermittent fasting work. The vast majority of health benefit from changes in diet is realized just by losing weight and not being fat anymore.
First of all, everyone intermittent fasts for like 8-10 hours per day unless they wake up in the middle of the night to eat anyway. Next step beyond that is something like having like a 16 hour fasting period and an 8 hour feeding window, but before the era of fitness influencers, that was just called skipping breakfast, because if you eat lunch at noon, maybe snack at 4PM and have dinner at say 8PM (two or three hours before bed), that puts all your meals within 8 hours of each other leaving you with 16 hours of fasting (2 of which you are full, 8 of which you sleep, 2 of which you spend in a hurry getting ready for work and getting to work and the remaining 4 hours is the first half of your work day before lunch break and the only time when you really feel hungrier compared to normal).
So you are never going from having a constant energy intake to suddenly having a fasting window anyway. You are going from having a 10 hour fasting window to a 16 hour one in most cases.
The reason intermittent fasting works well for some people is because those people psychologically find it easier to not eat at all than to eat but stop at an unsatifying portion size, so they save the calories from breakfast and move them into lunch and dinner. The reason some people report that on an intermittent fasting diet they can eat as much as they want and still lose weight is just because the gut has a limited capacity and it empties at a limited speed, which naturally puts a limit on how much food you are able to eat within just 8 hours and that amount will be lower than how much you could do in 16.
But the evidence is pretty clear that when you equate for total caloric intake, there is no difference in rates of weight loss between IF and normal eating schedules.