First of all, fasting is not hunger. Starvation is a prohibition against eating forced by outside forces; this occurs during war and famine when food is scarce. On the contrary, fasting is voluntary, deliberate, and controlled. Food is available but we choose not to eat it for spiritual, health, or other reasons.
Fasting is as old as man, much older than any other form of diet. Ancient civilizations, like the Greeks, realized that there was something intrinsically beneficial to the occasional fasting. They are often referred to as healing, cleansing, purifying, or detoxifying. Almost every culture and religion on earth practices some kind of fasting ritual.
Before the advent of agriculture, humans never ate three meals a day plus snacks in between. We eat only when we find food that can be hours or days. Therefore, in evolution, eating three meals a day is not a necessity for living. Otherwise, we will not survive as a species.
Fast forward to the 21st century, we all forget about this ancient practice. After all, fasting is really bad for business! Food manufacturers encourage us to eat food and snacks on a daily basis. Nutrition authorities warn that going beyond a single meal can have a detrimental effect on health. Over the years, these messages have been well-handled in our heads.
Fasting has no standard duration. It can take several hours to several days to months. Fasting takes place is an eating pattern in which the cycle between fasting and eating is normal. Fasting shorter 16-20 hours is generally performed more often, even daily. Longer fasts, usually 24-36 hours, are done 2-3 times a week. As it happens, we all fast every day for 12 hours or more between dinner and breakfast.
Fasting has been practiced by millions and millions of people for thousands of years. Is it not healthy? No. In fact, many studies have shown that it has enormous health benefits.
What Happens When We Eat Well?
Before going into the benefits of fasting timers, it's best to understand why eating 5-6 times a day or every few hours (as opposed to fasting) may actually be more harmful than good.
When we eat, we consume energy. The main hormone involved is insulin (produced by the pancreas), which increases during meal. Both carbohydrates and proteins stimulate insulin. Fat causes smaller insulin effects, but fat is rarely consumed by itself.
Insulin has two main functions -
- First, it allows the body to begin to consume energy. Carbohydrates quickly turn into glucose, increasing blood sugar levels. Insulin directs glucose to the body's cells for energy use. Proteins are broken down into amino acids and excess amino acids can be converted to glucose. Protein does not necessarily increase blood glucose but it can stimulate insulin. Fat has a minimal effect on insulin.
- Secondly, the insulin stores put extra energy into future use. Insulin converts excess glucose into glycogen and stores it in the liver. However, there are limits to how much glycogen can be stored. When this limit is reached, the liver begins to convert glucose to fat. The fat is then placed in the liver (excess, it becomes the fatty liver) or fat deposits in the body (usually stored as deep fat or stomach).
Therefore, when we eat and snack throughout the day, we are constantly eating and insulin levels are still high. In other words, we might spend most of the day saving energy.
What Happens When We Fast?
The process of consuming and storing food energy occurs when we eat upside down when we fast. Insulin levels decrease, causing the body to start burning stored energy. Glycogen, the glucose stored in the liver, is first accessed and used. Subsequently, the body begins to break down body fat stored for energy.
Therefore, the body basically exists in two states - high insulin diet and low insulin fast. We either save energy or we burn food. If you eat and fast fast, then there is no weight gain. If we spend most of our day eating and saving energy, there is a good chance that our past will eventually gain weight.
Fast Fasting Occurs Versus Calories-Restricted Calories
A continuous calorie reduction control strategy is the most common dietary recommendation for weight loss and type 2 diabetes. For example, the American Diabetes Association recommends a 500-750 kcal / day energy deficit coupled with regular physical activity. Nutritionists follow this approach and recommend eating 4-6 small meals throughout the day.
Does the partitioning strategy work in the long run? Rarely. A 9-year follow-up study from the United Kingdom on 176,495 obese individuals showed that only 3,528 of them achieved normal weight at the end of the study. That's a 98% failure rate!
Intermittent fasting is not a regular calorie restriction. Limiting calories causes an increase in compensation for hunger and worse, a decrease in your body's metabolic rate, a double curse! Because as we burn fewer calories every day, it becomes harder to lose weight and easier to gain weight after we lose it. This type of diet puts the body into "starvation mode" when metabolism goes down to save energy.
Fast fasting does not have any disadvantages to this.
Benefits of Intermittent Fasting Health
Enhances metabolism leading to weight loss and body fat loss
Unlike a daily calorie reduction diet, fasting intermittently raises metabolism. This makes sense from a living point of view. When we don't eat, the body uses stored energy as fuel so we can continue to look for other foods. Hormones allow the body to transfer energy from food to body fat.
Studies show this phenomenon clearly. For example, four days of fasting increased Basal Metabolic Rate by 12%. Norepinephrine's neurotransmitter levels, which prepare the body for action, increased by 117%. The fatty acids in the blood stream rise more than 370% as the body shifts from burning food to burning stored fat.
There is no loss in muscle mass
Unlike regular calorie-restrictive eating, fasting does not burn the muscles as many fear. In 2010, researchers looked at a group of subjects who spent 70 days alternating daily (eating one day and fasting ahead). Their muscle mass starts at 52.0 kg and ends at 51.9 kg. In other words, no muscle loss but they lost 11.4% fat and saw major improvements in LDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels.
During fasting, the body naturally produces more human growth hormones to maintain muscles and bones. Muscle mass is generally maintained until body fat drops below 4%. Therefore, most people are not at risk of damaging their muscles while fasting alternately.
Reduces insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and fatty liver
Type 2 diabetes is a condition in which there is too much sugar in the body , so the cells can no longer respond to insulin and take in more glucose than blood (insulin resistance), resulting in high blood sugar. Also, the liver is saturated with fat as it tries to purify excess glucose by converting it and storing it as fat.
Therefore, to reverse this situation, two things need to happen -
- First, stop more sugar into the body.
- Second, burn the remaining sugar.
The best diets to achieve this level are low carbohydrate diets, low protein, and high fat diets also known as ketogentic diets. (Keep in mind that carbohydrates increase blood sugar most, protein to a certain extent, and minimal fat.) That's why a low-carb diet will help reduce your glucose load. For some people, this is enough to reverse the insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. However, in worse cases, diet alone is not enough.
What about exercise? Exercise will help burn glucose in skeletal muscle but not all tissues and organs, including fatty liver. Obviously, exercise is important, but to eliminate excess glucose in the organs, there is a need to temporarily "starve" cells.
Intermediate fasting can achieve this. That is why in history, people are called fasting or detox. It can be a very powerful tool to get rid of all the benefits. This is the fastest way to lower blood glucose and insulin levels, and ultimately reverse insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and fatty liver.
In this way, taking insulin for type 2 diabetes does not address the root cause of the problem, which is excess sugar in the body. It is true that insulin triggers glucose from the blood, resulting in lower blood glucose, but where does that sugar go? The liver will only make everything fat, fat in the heart and fat in the stomach. Patients who go on insulin often gain more weight, which exacerbates their diabetes.
Improve heart health
Further, high blood glucose from type 2 diabetes can damage the blood vessels and nerves that control the heart. The longer the diabetes, the more likely it is to develop heart disease. By lowering blood sugar through intermittent fasting, the risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke also decreases.
Additionally, intermittent fasting has been shown to increase blood pressure, total LDL (bad) cholesterol, blood triglycerides, and inflammatory markers associated with many chronic diseases.
Increase brain power
Multiple studies show that fasting has many neurological benefits including attention and focus, reaction time, immediate memory, cognition, and the generation of new brain cells. Rat studies have also shown that intermittent fasting reduces brain inflammation and prevents Alzheimer's symptoms. s.
What to Expect Into Fasting
Extreme Hunger
We usually feel hungry about four hours after eating. So, if we fast for 24 hours, does that mean that our hunger will be six times worse? Of course not.
Many people worry that fasting will lead to extreme hunger and excessive eating. Studies show that on the day after the one-day fast, there is a 20% increase in calorie intake. However, with repeated fasting, hunger and appetite were surprisingly reduced.
Famine comes in waves. If we do nothing, the hunger will disappear after a while. Drinking tea (of all kinds) or coffee (with or without caffeine) is often enough to counter it. However, it is better to drink it in black even if one teaspoon or two cream or half will not trigger an insulin reaction. Do not use any type of sugar or artificial sweetener. If needed, bone soup can also be taken while fasting.
Blood sugar doesn't work
Sometimes people worry that their blood sugar will drop very low during fasting and they will become fatigued and sweaty. This is actually not the case because blood sugar is closely monitored by the body and there are many mechanisms to keep it in the right range. During fasting, the body begins to break down glycogen in the liver to release glucose. This happens every night during sleep.
If we fast longer than 24-36 hours, the glycogen stores run out and the liver releases new glucose using glycerol which is a byproduct of fat (a process called gluconeogenesis). In addition to using glucose, our brain cells can also use ketones for energy. Ketones are produced when fats are metabolized and they can supply up to 75% of their brain energy needs (another 25% of glucose).
The only exception is for those taking diabetes and insulin. You should consult your doctor first as the dose may need to be reduced while you are fasting. Otherwise, if you have overmedicate and hypoglycemia develops, which can be dangerous, you must have sugar to reverse it. This will break down quickly and make it productive.
The phenomenon of dawn
After the fast period, especially in the morning, some people experience high blood glucose. This dawn phenomenon is the result of the circadian rhythm that before the awakening, the body secretes several higher levels of hormones to prepare for the coming day -
- Adrenaline - to energize the energy
- Growth hormones - to help repair and create new proteins
- Glucagon - to transfer glucose from the liver to the blood for use as energy
- Cortisol, a stress hormone - to activate the body
This hormone peaks in the morning, then drops to a lower level during the day. In diabetic patients, the magnitude of blood sugar increases is small and most people will not notice it. However, for most diabetics, there is an increase in blood glucose when the liver releases sugar into the blood.
This will also happen in the extended fasting. When there is no food, insulin levels remain low while the liver releases some of the stored sugars and fat. This is natural and not a bad thing at all. The size of the spike decreases as the liver becomes less saturated with sugar and fat.
Who Can’t Fast Alternatively?
- Women who want to get pregnant, get pregnant, or breastfeed.
- People who are malnourished or underweight.
- Children under 18 and older.
- Those with gout.
- People with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).
- People with eating disorders should consult their doctor first.
- People taking diabetes and insulin medications should consult with their doctor as the dose needs to be reduced.
- Those who take the medication should consult their doctor first as the medication may be affected.
- People who are depressed or have cortisol problems should not fast because fasting is another stress.
- Those who train very hard all day of the week should not fast.
How to Prepare for a Fast Fasting?
If you are thinking about starting a fast, you should first switch to a low-carb, high-fat diet for three weeks. This will allow the body to use fat instead of glucose as a source of energy. That means eliminating all sugars, cereals (bread, cakes, pastries, pasta, rice), legumes, and refined vegetable oils. This will minimize most of the side effects associated with fasting.
Fast start 16 hours, for example, from dinner (8pm) to lunch (12pm) the next day. You can eat between 12pm and 8pm, and you can eat two or three meals. Once you are comfortable with it, you can extend the fast for 18, 20 hours.
For a shorter fast, you can do it daily, continuously. For longer fasts, such as 24-36 hours, you can do it 1-3 times a week, alternating between fasting and regular meals.
There is no single fast fasting regime. The key is to choose the one that suits you best. Some people achieve results with shorter fasts, while others may require longer fasts. Some people do just plain water, others drink tea and coffee quickly, others with bone soup. No matter what you do, it's important to stay hydrated and monitor yourself. If you feel pain at any time, you should stop immediately. You can be hungry, but you don't have to feel sick.
A Powerful Tool For Weight Loss & Diabetes: Intermittent Fasting
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