If you’re reading this, you probably know by now, how important it is to maintain a healthy weight. There is a big chance that you also know that gaining weight is easier than losing it. This is perhaps because eating is a natural requirement, whereas working out and dieting isn’t. The effort required to send some calories down your tummy is way much less than the amount required when struggling to cut off some calories or shed some fat off your waistline.
Nonetheless, weight loss is a common elephant in the room for so many people. While regular exercise remains the best and healthiest way to lose or manage weight, it works best for people who keep their nutrition in check. Some people even try losing weight through the diet approach alone using ketogenic diets, portion restrictions, and fasting. Whichever way you look at it, the phrase “no pain, no gain” prevails. To focus on the latter, this piece is going to take you through intermittent fasting, what it is, how it works, its benefits, and much more. Keep reading!
What Is Intermittent Fasting?
The modern trend of life leaves us eating too much and doing almost nothing all day. No wonder the a high number of overweight people. For this reason, many people are always looking for ways to shed excess fat and keep their weight in control. If you guessed right, intermittent fasting is one of the most popular approaches used in weight loss and weight management.
You are probably wondering what the term intermittent fasting might mean. Well, simply put, it entails restraining yourself from eating to achieve your body weight goals. It is often effective, especially on people who gain weight easily without eating much. Intermittent fasting involves keeping yourself from eating, so your body burns the excess fat stored in your body to help you lose some weight and achieve some sculpting.
Essentially, you will focus less on what you eat and more on when you eat during IF. As the folks over at https://21dayhero.com vividly highlight, you will need to follow specific meal plans and fasting challenges to get the best results. In most cases, you will be taking your food in controlled portions and eating at specific times of the day for a couple of weeks. Whether you are looking to shed off unwanted fat or trying to achieve that model figure, intermittent fasting can help.
How Does Intermittent Fasting Work?
As mentioned, this is a discipline where you restrain yourself to a certain eating schedule till you reach the weight goals you have set for yourself. Intermittent fasting can be done in several ways. However, they are all based on the fact that you choose regular periods to eat and fast. You might, for instance, set a certain period of the day – say an eight-hour time-frame – in which you will eat and then fast the rest of the day. You may as well decide to only have one meal a day two days a week to make sure you maintain the bodyweight you intend to maintain.
What happens is that when you go for hours without food, the body exhausts all its sugar stores and starts burning fat. This is sometimes referred to as metabolic switching, a natural process known to be crucial in the adaptation and survival of species. Consistency in the routine denies your body the chance of building up fat, thus keeping your body weight in check and possibly making you slimmer.
What Are the Benefits of Intermittent Fasting?
With all the fat being burnt in your body, it becomes easy to maintain healthy body weight. This means that if you are successful, you can keep various lifestyle diseases at bay, from obesity to diabetes, heart disease, certain cancers, and other ailments related to being overweight. Additional benefits of intermittent fasting may also include the following:
- Enhanced memory and mental health - having a healthy fit body, means that your blood vessels allow the proper flow of blood to all organs. One thing about the brain is that its proper working depends largely on the quality of blood flow. Intermittent fasting is therefore known to boost your thinking and memory.
- A boost in physical performance - with good blood flow to all body organs and less fat in your body, your body performs better. All you have are lean muscles and with the favorable bodyweight, your endurance is greatly heightened. This is the other benefit of intermittent fasting.
A healthier heart- intermittent fasting will improve blood pressure and other heart-related measurements. This means your heart remains free from all possible problems.
When many people hear the word fasting, they tend to associate it with starving themselves. However, this is hardly the case. Intermittent fasting simply involves checking your eating pattern and restricting eating to certain periods. You can also focus on caloric intake, skip some meals, or restrict large meals to certain times of the day.
