Everyone knows about regular fasting, but have you ever heard of intermittent fasting? This is the latest trend and an effective way to lose weight, intermittent fasting will not only give you a lot of health benefit although it will also help in reducing body weight.
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How to do Intermittent fasting?
This is a diet plan in which you are supposed to skip meals while staying hungry for a long time. Before going on intermittent fasting the time of meals and the food to be eaten can be decided in advance.
Intermittent fasting can be followed for various interval of time duration such as it can be done for 12 hours, or may be for 14 to 18 hours. In this fasting, whenever a meal is taken, the focus is on reducing the amount of carbohydrates and taking more of protein and fiber, which helps in reducing body weight.
When you are on intermittent fasting, and your body needs energy, then at that time it uses the excess fat stored in the body. This way your excess fat starts dissolving and disappearing from the body. Therefore Intermittent Fasting is considered to be the simplest and easiest way to lose weight.
Types of Intermittent fasting
1. Skipping meal for 16 hours
By adopting this method one has to avoid eating for 16 hours. For example, if you have dinner at night, then you will have lunch next day only after completing 16 hours, hence you need to skip breakfast. Also, the time between lunch and dinner should be fixed which is 8 hours. That is, after lunch you are supposed to have the next meal that is dinner after completing 8 hours.
2. Skipping meal for a full day
By adopting this method, you can take a normal diet for 5 days, but on any 2 days of the week, you should eat only that much so that the body gets only 500 to 600 calories precisely but not more than that. It should be kept in mind that there should be a normal eating day between 2 days of avoiding food.
3. Skipping meal for 20 hours
In this method, you should go on fast for complete 20 hours, during which fruits and lean proteins can be eaten. After this, you need to set a time of 4 hours in which you can eat and in that time you can only eat lot of vegetables, protein and fat are to be taken, whereas carbohydrates are to be consumed only when there is a fast appetite.
4. Skipping meal for 24 hours
In this method, you are supposed to avoid eating either 1 or 2 times for complete 24 hours once in a week. During the rest of the days, you are required to maintain a normal routine diet.
5. One Meal in a Day
In this type of intermittent fasting, you can only eat once in a day and keep skipping the other day meals.
How to start intermittent fasting?
According to your lifestyle and routine, you can adopt whatever method of intermittent fasting suits you.
What to eat during intermittent fasting?
- Drink plenty of water, so that you remain well hydrated.
- Eat fibre-rich foods like nuts, beans, fruits and vegetables.
- Eat high protein foods including fish, tofu or nuts.
- Have black coffee, tea, cinnamon or licorice herbal tea during that time period when you are not eating.
- In the morning you can start with coffee instead of tea. Coffee helps in reducing weight too.
- Coconut water can be consumed in the day for fulfilling the lack of water in the body.
- Include low-calorie foods in the diet. Instead of fried food, include boiled foods in the diet.
- Do not consume cold drinks and other beverages available in the market.
Benefits of intermittent fasting
1. Weight loss
The biggest advantage of Intermittent Fasting is weight loss. Intermittent fasting is considered to be the most effective way in reducing abdominal obesity.
2. Improve digestion
By controlling diet, your digestive problems can be cured. Improper functioning of digestive system is the main cause of growing obesity. The stomach also need time to digest food, but this can be reduced by taking meals at several times a day.
Intermittent fasting gives the stomach plenty of time to digest food, which reduces the chances of increasing fat and also keeps your digestive system healthy.
3. Decrease the risk of diabetes
With Intermittent Fasting, you can increase your metabolism easily. Because of which insulin starts functioning properly in the body. Intermittent fasting also helps to control insulin levels, which causes fat burning quickly. This process also reduces the risk of diabetes.
4. Benefits skin
When digestion becomes good due to fasting, it is easy to discard the toxins out of the body. When toxins are not in the body, the skin gets the maximum benefits. Liquid is also consumed during intermittent fasting, which increases the glow of the skin.
5. Keeps heart healthy
Intermittent fasting also helps to keep the heart-healthy. Actually, due to this method, it helps in controlling blood sugar level, cholesterol, fat etc. These things are not good for the heart, so control over them will keep your heart healthy.
Side effects of Intermittent fasting
1. Risk of Overeating
Intermittent fasting is not so easy. Due to the difference of 12 or more hours between the two meals, the body digests the food completely, so there is a risk of development of high appetite, which also increases the risk of overeating.
2. Feeling of Weakness
You may experience weakness due to intermittent fasting. When you are hungry from evening till morning, there is a scarcity of nutrients in the body which are necessary to generate energy in the body, due to which the weekiness is certain.
3. Creates bad mood
Eating is very closely related to mood. Often you have noticed that a persons become irritable when they are hungry, the same situation happens during intermittent fasting. You feel hungry but you convince yourself for intermittent fasting and do not eat anything, in such situation their is a risk of occurance of bad mood as well as work also get affected.
4. Sleep deprivation
If the stomach is not filled properly, there may be a problem of not sleeping properly. Many times it happens that after working hard throughout the day then even after eating food in the evening, suddenly you feels hungry at night, but due to following intermittent fasting, you can not eat anything, due to which you may feel difficulty in sleeping or sleeplessness.
5. Dehydration
Dehydration may also be a problem due to intermittent fasting. In fact, when we do not eat food, thirst often also reduces, in such a situation the chances of lack of water in the body increase, which is not good and create excessive dehydration.
Hope you enjoy this article. If you know more about intermittent fasting then please share with me. Please write to me in the comment box. Check my instagram page @beautifulyoufit for more beauty and health tips.
