Intermittent fasting is not really a diet; it is more like an eating pattern where periods of eating alternate with periods of not eating or fasting. This type of program has several health benefits, including weight loss and longevity.
There are two types of intermittent fasting. The first one does not allow you to consume any calories in a specific period – your fasting period. The other type does still allow you to eat, but your calorie intake will be significantly lower than on non-fasting days.
How does it works?
With intermittent fasting, your body operates differently when “feasting” compared to when “fasting”:
When you eat a meal, your body spends a few hours processing that food, burning what it can from what you just consumed. Because it has all of this readily available, easy to burn energy in its blood stream (thanks to the food you ate), your body will choose to use that as energy rather than the fat you have stored. This is especially true if you just consumed carbohydrates/sugar, as your body prefers to burn sugar as energy before any other source.
During the “fasted state,” your body doesn’t have a recently consumed meal to use as energy, so it is more likely to pull from the fat stored in your body, rather than the glucose in your blood stream or glycogen in your muscles/liver.Burning fat = win.
The same goes for working out in a “fasted” state. Without a ready supply of glucose and glycogen to pull from (which has been depleted over the course of your fasted state, and hasn’t yet been replenished with a pre-workout meal), your body is forced to adapt and pull from the only source of energy available to it: the fat stored in your cells!
Why does this work? Our bodies react to energy consumption (eating food) with insulin production. Essentially, the more sensitive your body is to insulin, the more likely you’ll be to use the food you consume efficiently, which can help lead to weight loss and muscle creation.
Along with that, your body is most sensitive to insulin following a period of fasting.
Your glycogen (a starch stored in your muscles and liver that your body can burn as fuel when necessary) is depleted during sleep (fasting), and will be depleted even further during training, which can further increase insulin sensitivity. This means that a meal immediately following your workout will be stored most efficiently: mostly as glycogen for muscle stores, burned as energy immediately to help with the recovery process, with minimal amounts stored as fat.
Compare this to a regular day (no intermittent fasting). With insulin sensitivity at normal levels, the carbs and foods consumed will see full glycogen stores, enough glucose in the blood stream, and thus be more likely to get stored as fat.
Not only that, but growth hormone is increased during fasted states (bothduring sleep and after a period of fasting). Combine this increased growth hormone secretion, the decrease in insulin production (and thus increase in insulin sensitivity), and you’re essentially priming your body for muscle growth and fat loss with intermittent fasting.The less science-y version: Intermittent fasting can help teach your body to use the food it consumes more efficiently. For many different physiological reasons, fasting can help promote weight loss and muscle building when done properly.
Benefits
Weight loss – Sugars from the food you eat get stored as glycogen in your liver. When your body needs energy, it first starts to burn glycogen. Normally, it takes up to 7-8 hours to burn all the stored glycogen and to go after fat cells.
With normal eating patterns, that rarely ever happens, however, with the intermittent fasting diet, you have longer periods without food during which your body converts stored fats into energy. Moreover, that means you will lose weight.
Detoxification – Fasting gives your body time to repair all the cells and drive toxins out of your body. You will feel healthier and look younger.
Hormonal balance – Intermittent fasting increases the levels of human growth hormone, which helps to repair and grow muscle and slow down aging. Fasting also normalizes leptin and ghrelin levels; both of these hormones regulate hunger.
Longevity – Since fasting cleanses your whole body, rejuvenates the cells, and keeps the skin clear and smooth, we can say that longevity is one of its benefits. We all heard stories of 100-year-old men who have not eaten for decades. Do not try that at home though!
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