Have you seen people striving to lose weight and doing everything but not getting the satisfactory results? You can suggest your intermittent fasting plan to lose weight quickly. Among much other famed weight losing plans, Intermittent fasting is getting into the recent limelight. This process is all about on-off eating fasting twice a week maybe. There are different types of intermittent fasting depending upon the time you are required to skip eating for but generally, it is not more than leaving the food while you’re sleeping. If we observe we fast on the daily basis while sleeping and during intermittent fasting, you can consider your body in sleep for a little longer. Just a trick, eh?

How to lose weight has become a grand question with the increasing prevalence rate of obesity and there is a diverse variety of answers. As for intermittent fasting, I hope it can feed your quest better. Before getting into how does it do the trick, let’s have a look at what intermittent fasting actually is.

What is intermittent fasting?

Fasting for short periods, eating from time to time and lowering the calorie intake by skipping meals are generally called intermittent fasting. This helps you control your eating habits with a lifetime guarantee (if you agree to it) and activates the weight losing hormones. Intermittent fasting regimens have rocked the weight loss community recently and people have shown practical evidence of its affectivity because it is easy to follow as compared to crash diet or extreme calorie restriction (CR).

How to fast is different for different people and here are some basic intermittent fasting methods:

On-Off Eating: This expects you to fast for one or two 24 hours each week. For instance, take the dinner now and don’t eat anything until the next dinner.

The 16/8 Trick: This expects you to skip the morning meals and only eat during a selected 8 hour time span to say from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m.

The 5.2 trick: This plan expects you to divide your weekdays into two parts. 2 days for eating nothing and 5 days for eating normally.

Intermittent fasting actually restricts the energy intake at different time periods as suggested above and allow you to eat freely (not too freely) in the non-restriction days. Just as the 24 hours fasting that you can label as Alternate Day fasting (ADF) is a category of intermittent fasting and it allows you to restrict your 75% energy today but offers you a free day of tomorrow. Make sense?

Even the recent research have backed the idea of intermittent fasting for weight loss by saying that intermittent fasting or alternate day fasting is equally effective as the calorie restriction which is way more difficult to follow and that not only it helps the weight loss but also shields your system against cardiac problems.

If you take care of your non-fasting hours and aren’t stuffing yourself with all the unnecessary bites, you are going to rock the swimsuit next weekend. Trust me!

Note: Intermittent fasting is not similar to the dieting as dieting asks you to eat less all the time while fasting asks you to skip meal completely once but taking the whole meals when you’re allowed to. Intermittent fasting has nothing to do with limiting your nutrition.

Science behind the intermittent fasting

The concept of fasting dates back to ages in history. But the real trick of intermittent fasting was discovered as far back as the 1930s when some European Scientists played the experimental cards over two groups of mice to check the effects of significant calorie reduction. They observed the better stomach performance and health level in the mice who took the healthy diet at a time a strictly no diet the other time than the mice who were treated opposite. Even it was noticed that the mice who took 40% fewer calories than their routine on their eating time were healthier. Furthermore, they also witnessed the diminished level of insulin and glucose in their bodies that in humans can help fight diabetes. Later on, they confirmed the results by duplicating the experiment over monkeys, fruit flies and some worms. And further research has also backed this idea working in human beings. However, people concerned with the science demand more detailed research in this area to make better, trustworthy and compelling statements.

Intermittent Fasting and weight loss

The basic trick that intermittent fasting does for your weight loss is the reduced calorie intake plan. If you follow the intermittent fasting in the right way without stuffing yourself with extra food in eating hours, you will see the mouth-opening results. Research supports that to improve overall health and to lose weight; people should focus on lowering the total amount of calories they consume.

As Freedland said, “If you don’t eat two days a week, and limit what you eat the other five days, you will lose weight. It’s one approach to losing weight”.

He further added that “I’m not sure it works any better than cutting down slightly seven days a week”.

A research published in the Translational Research; The Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicines in 2014 put forward the fact that intermittent fasting can help you lose 3-8% of your total body weight in a matter of weeks. For the purpose of the above-mentioned research when experimenter tested the weight loss of participants, they had lost 0.25kg with the intermittent fasting and those who survived on the Alternate Day Fasting (ADF-A category of intermittent fasting) lost 0.75kg.

It is also seen that there is no difference in the weight loss if you limit your calories strictly with your routine diet or by intermittent fasting but the only difference is that intermittent fasting is easy to follow.

More of, in intermittent fasting, you don’t need to count calories but it will offer you the same results as the reduced calorie plan. Exciting!

And that intermittent fasting does an awesome job for holding your muscles together. Basically, the reduced calorie diet plan help you lose weight but it burns muscles along with the fats too that upset your balance and overall well-being. As an overview study published at NCBI revealed that the 25% of the weight loss caused by the reduced calorie diet was the muscle weight while it is entirely opposite in the intermittent fasting.

Another study published at Nutrition.org also unveiled the amazing results of their study in which two groups took the same amount of calories one in the whole day while other group took all the calories in one meal. The results show that the participants who took all the calories at one time lost more weight than the other group’s participants.

Other Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent fasting is not only limited to answering the how to lose weight queries or fat burning delights but also spark your hygiene to an upper level. When you don’t take many calories in a day your body works differently to approach the stored energy to assist the body’s functioning. It hits your nervous system as well as alters some of the important hormones too. Here are the certain changes that intermittent fasting casts upon the body during the weight losing process:                                                                                        Norepinephrine: The nervous system shoots the norepinephrine to the fats cells of the body, crushing them down producing fatty acids that can offer you some energy.

Human Growth Hormone (HGH): Yes, the one that helps you grow. This is one of the hormones that when boosted up helps you burn the fats cells and reserve your muscles and intermittent fasting knows how to knock it off.

Insulin: Eating boosts the insulin level in the body and due to fasting, its level decreases remarkably helping you burn more fats.

Intermittent fasting is awesome as according to a research 48 hours of fasting can help you boost your metabolism by 3.6 to 14%. But remember that the fasting which is unhealthily long and extensive can put you into hazardous trouble.

What should you do to lose weight with intermittent fasting?

To lose weight through intermittent fasting you should keep certain points in focus that will help you lose weight quickly without draining your energy and without wasting your time. Just keep these points before eyes:

Eat Healthy

Quality comes before than quantity. Make it sure that you’re eating healthy food containing essential nutritive entities and don’t stuff yourself with extra calories at the non-fasting period. This is important because if you feast upon the junk food and sugary drinks during your eating hours, that can robustly spoil the whole of your weight losing plan.

Care about Calories

Even if you don’t need to count the calories with the intermittent fasting to pursue how to lose weight ride if you’re sticking to the healthy diet but still, some extra care feels good. You can take care of whether the food you’re eating is good for you or not. As for 1200 calorie diet, there will be some processed foods that might contain all of those calories in themselves not even giving you space to take a fresh juice. Within those 1200 calories, you need to cover all the things you need, all aspects of your nutrition containing proteins, fiber, sodium, calcium, iron etc.

Stay consistent

Consistency is the key to success no matter what are you talking about. Don’t give up on your efforts and don’t skip your routine. It shouldn’t be one week on and the other week off weight losing plan. Just hold on and keep struggling until you get what you actually want.

Have patience

Sometimes, it gets difficult for the body to adapt to the change, just have some patience and give some time to your body to adjust with intermittent fasting and rest will be done.

Exercise and Intermittent fasting

If you want to heighten your weight losing process, you can combine the intermittent fasting with the strength training which is best in your off-fasting hours and that can offer you some serious muscle growth and fat reduction transforming you into fitness diva.

How much weight loss you can expect?

The answer to this question varies subjectively. However, the Alternate-Day-Diet’s author lost 35lbs in 11 weeks which make 3lbs a week. But on average you can expect 2lbs weight loss in one week.

This statement is based on a short study conducted by volunteering 4 obese men and 12 obese women who followed the similar intermittent fasting and showed the 12lbs weight loss in 8 weeks making it 1.5lbs a week and from 45 to 42 leveled drop in body fats. They further reported the balance in the LDL cholesterol level and blood pressure issues.

Pros and Cons of intermittent fasting

The best thing about intermittent fasting is the calorie magic. If you daily take 2000 calories and switch to the fasting now, you will be having 400 calories one fasting day and 2000 calories in the next day (non-fasting day). This will make you take 2400 calories for two days in total instead of 4000 calories you might have taken generally.

But after following the intermittent fasting for so many days or weeks, you might start binge eating during the fasting hours. That’s just an assumption or an alarm that you should keep in mind while taking food in the non-fasting hours that you need proper nutrition with proper energy. May the whole power be with you!

The final note

Intermittent fasting means on-off eating that help you reduce your calories intake and make you lose weight without many side effects. But still intermittent fasting might not be for everyone out there but no doubt for some people who know the tactics of taking care of themselves. If you think you’re the one, intermittent fasting can be the best weight losing plan for you guiding you properly on the edges of the super long how to lose weight quest.

Eat well, live well.