Intermittent fasting is when you only eat during a certain time frame of the day and fast for a certain amount of hours, or only eat one meal a few times a week! It’s different for everyone but it brings an immense amount of health benefits and can help your body burn fat. For example, you could choose to eat within an 8 hour time frame and then fast for 16 hours. During the times that you aren’t eating, your body has time to rest instead of digesting food throughout the entire day. The energy that was used to digest food can now be used for other things!
Why is Intermittent Fasting Beneficial?
This type of fasting can get your body into a healing state much better than any medication could. As mentioned earlier, it gives your digestive system a break which allows time for it to heal from the effects that certain foods have had on the system. This will also bring your energy levels up significantly! Intermittent fasting also helps your body kill cells that have the potential to form into cancer cells. It strengthens your immune system as well! The phrase “starve the fever” is an example of the effect it has on your immune system. When you have a fever, you don’t eat. This is because your body needs to use all of its energy to kill the virus in the body rather than using its energy to digest food. If you eat all day your body is continually releasing insulin which can lead your cells to become insulin resistant. It can be extremely helpful for women who struggle with really heavy periods because it resets the hormone cascade and reduces the release of insulin which contributes to issues such as PCOS. With intermittent fasting, growth hormones go up, cortisol levels go down, and it will reduce the amount of bad estrogens that are being produced.
What Will I Experience During Intermittent Fasting?
Most people experience an energy crash and won’t feel great when starting out. If your body is addicted to sugar it will take a bit of time to shift out of this phase. The first week may be really rough but it will get easier from there! Make sure to eat high fat because it will give you more energy and make you feel more full. If you get pain in the right side of your abdomen, upper back, get diarrhea or are extremely sluggish and tired after eating a lot of fat, take bile salts and digestive enzymes to help you break down the fat. If you already eat clean you may feel extreme mental clarity, more energy, restful sleep, fast fat burning, and will see more muscle definition.
Who Should and Shouldn’t Start Intermittent Fasting?
Intermittent fasting is great for people with autoimmune diseases! It is extremely beneficial and can help the digestive system heal. Men who need to get their testosterone levels up would benefit as well. Testosterone is stronger when insulin levels are lowered, which is exactly what intermittent fasting does. It is also extremely helpful or anyone who is pre-diabetic, obese or needs significant weight loss, and people who have cancer. Those who should NOT consider fasting are those with diabetes or if you are pregnant or breastfeeding.
Start by choosing a time frame. A few suggestions are to either start by only eating three meals a day without snacking, pick an 8 hour window that you can eat during the day (example: start eating at 12pm and stop at 8pm), or use a 4 hour window of eating. Each person will need something different but if you’re just starting out, start small and work your way up. Eat non-inflammatory foods, take out sugar make sure to eat high fats! Happy fasting!!
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