What is intermittent fasting ?
We all are familiar with regular fasting which is removal of food from our diets altogether while some fasting techniques allow you to consume atleast 25% diet.
But how is intermittent fasting different?
Intermittent fasting is a pattern of fasting that includes fasting and eating at intervals where usually the fasting period is 16 hours when nothing is going inside your body except water or black coffee and the rest 8 hours of the day you have to ideally eat healthy. Now we know, what you think is that you might get weaker and loose muscle mass because fasting for 16 hours sounds insane? But wait, let’s just get kicked in with the benefits.
Scientific reason behind why intermittent fasting is beneficial :-
Intermittent fasting helps in secretion of HGH, a hormone that secretes in bloodstream at night and is suppressed after a person haves a meal.
How is secretion of HGH helpful:-
1. HGH or human growth hormone, as the name suggest is the growth hormone in children and adolescents, However in adults this provides the function for muscle growth, recovery and repair.
2. HGH also acts as ‘protein sparer’ in human body.
3. HGH is super effective for fat mobilization i.e. burning of fat to use in your daily life activity.
4. The more you fast, more the HGH releases in your body.
Intermittent fasting helps in burning fat (without having to loose your muscles). The science behind this is that when you fast for straight 16 hours, your body actually thinks that it is starving and starts releasing HGH or human growth hormone. Apart from that, it helps in improving your reflexes and helps you even in workout.
Let us also throw some light on those 8 hours where you have to feed yourself :-
The whole point of fasting will loose its essence if you rush to eat burgers and pizzas in the eating part. The process actually gets successful when you eat healthy after fasting. The diet should be divided into protein (the requirement ranges from 70-100gms differing from person to person) healthy fats like nuts, seeds, soy and complex carbs like oats and meals instead of white bread, white rice and maida. In order to balance energy one should have coffee or tea but preferably without sugar. The key is to maintain calorie deficit i.e the burnt fat should be more than the fat consumed.
Although this practice has been proved to be amazing and that you can follow it for long term as well.
But there are few key points that you must keep in mind before jumping into this practice.
1. Educate yourself properly before you actually execute it so that you don’t loose faith in the process. At the end of the day, we know that 16 hours fasting needs pretty good conviction to your mind.
2. Although it is also effective for making your body insulin resistance which ultimately helps in lowering blood sugar levels but one of the study showed in 2005 women’s blood sugar level got even worse after 22 hours of fasting. To shorten, know your body well.
3. Initially it might be a little difficult to start.
4. Maintaining energy level might need a little more effort.
To summaries, intermittent fasting might be difficult to start. One should also analyze his/her body properly before executing it. Apart from that, it has ample of benefits, can be advantageous for heart and may even help prevent cancer.
