Intermittent fasting is a powerful strategy to improve our health.
So, what is Intermittent fasting? It is a scheduled eating; fast (no food) for 16 hours, and eat during 8 hours in a 24 hour day. This 16 - 8 is the standard.
After 12 hours without food, the stored glucose from the food we consumed previously will be depleted and for the next 4 hours our body will try to burn stored fat as fuel.
Drinks,- water, cofee and tea without milk or sugar is allowed during the fasting period. If we do this regularly our body will adapt and start burning fat as fuel. By limiting sugar and high carb food consumption, this will be achieved sooner. And if you exercise one to two hours before your first meal, the fat burning will be accelerated even more.
Intermittent fasting gives our digestive system a rest and time to recover. Also very important - it trains our body to use fat as the primary fuel. Like a hybrid car, our body has dual fuel system, glucose and fat. Fat is more efficient and clean burning fuel compared to glucose, which means we need less of it to produce the same energy and produces less after burn garbage (free radicals). This is great for our metabolic health, the health of our cell mitochondria.
We are accustomed to burning glucose as our primary fuel due to our eating habit; consuming a lot of sugar, and high-carb diet.
Intermittent fasting coupled with less sugar and less simple carbohydrate consumption enable our body to switch to burn fat as our primary fuel. This has multiple benefits for our health. It reduces the risk of cancer, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer, cardiovascular disease, obesity and helps control body weight.
When your body can switch from burning glucose to burning fat as primary fuel easily, you will not feel the hunger or unsatisfied feeling or sweet craving as much anymore, because your cells, especially the brain cells, can now use ketones (from fat) as fuel and not rely only on glucose.
After almost 2 years of Intermittent Fasting most days (not every day), I have dropped my body fat form 20% to 13%; this was achieved with less time spend on exercise. My craving for sweets and carb diminished.
Here is one of several websites that provides body fat percentage calculator - bodyfat
Warning: This strategy, Intermittent Fasting, is not for everyone; especially if your health is being challenged already at this time. If you decide to try it out, ease into it. I started with, - stop eating around 8 PM, 3 hours before bedtime. Tea (without sugar or milk) is o.k. but nothing with carb. Sometimes I have chamomile tea. Next, the following step is - postpone breakfast time by 1 hour. A week later by 2 hours, etc. Soon my eating schedule is - first meal around 12 noon, last meal around 8 PM. Currently I am more relax, my fasting period is sometimes 14 or 15 hours.
If your current health condition permits, I highly recommend that you try this Intermittent fasting strategy to improve your health. It has helped me, and it costs nothing.
Just do not over do it, once you know that your body can switch to burning fat, you can ease up and take a break from fasting now and then.
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Thanks for reading my post, hope you find it helpful.
