Many people feel that the weight loss effect is not good after trying light fasting for some time, so they think that fasting is useless. They made some common beginner mistakes. How to avoid these mistakes and make intermittent fasting work better?
Intermittent fasting, along with the ketogenic diet, is rapidly spreading around the world, and its potential health benefits have been verified by more and more scientists, including reducing inflammation and reducing the risk of diseases such as heart disease and cancer caused by inflammation; Lose weight; Stabilize blood sugar levels to prevent diabetes; Promote autophagy, delay body aging, etc.
Among these benefits, weight loss is the most important and obvious effect of intermittent fasting. Reducing body fat and visceral fat will improve overall health.
However, many people find that the weight loss effect is not ideal after a period of light fasting, thinking that fasting is useless, and all the benefits of it are exaggerated. The poor weight loss effect is because they have made some common mistakes among beginners of light fasting.
During fasting, the body will undergo a series of physiological changes. If the fasting time is long enough, the body will enter a state of ketosis and start to switch from burning glucose for energy to burning fat.
At the same time, autophagy is triggered, which is a process of self-repair. Aged, damaged, or dead proteins and organelles are broken down, recycled, and new cells are made. The autophagy mechanism plays an important role in delaying aging.
However, some mistakes during fasting will prevent the body from entering the state of fat-burning and autophagy, and the weight loss effect will be greatly reduced.
Here are a few common mistakes newbies to intermittent fasting make:
1. Eager for quick success
You now know a little bit about intermittent fasting and probably think of it as a weight loss tool that will allow you to reach your goal weight in a very short amount of time.
【Wrong approach】
You may be rushing to achieve your goals as quickly as possible, regardless of how your body feels. Switching from glucose as an energy source to fat as fuel is a big change and it takes your body time to adapt. If you have always been used to three meals a day, not counting various snacks, and then suddenly one day you decide to lose weight and immediately reduce from three meals to one, it is equivalent to cutting off the power to your body all at once.
The energy that’s supposed to be on the schedule doesn’t come, and your body and brain are under stress. Not only that, but during the period when you are not eating, you will keep looking at the clock, thinking about the next meal, and you will not be able to concentrate on doing things, which will increase the pressure on your body and brain. And once it’s time to eat, it’s easy to overeat.
Intermittent fasting is a healthy way of living and eating that deserves long-term adherence. Its significance is to teach our brains to know when to eat and when to stop. When you keep eating, your blood sugar will always be at a high level, which can easily induce insulin resistance. Even if you are full, your brain will not receive the correct signal.
[Correct practice]
To avoid overeating after fasting, the body needs to gradually adapt to this change. The more natural the process, the better. You can start by cutting back on snacks and then go from three meals a day to two.
Or gradually extend the fasting time, for example, stop eating after 8 pm on the first day, eat breakfast at 8 am the next morning, and then every one to three days, delay breakfast for 30 minutes, or eat dinner 30 minutes earlier, This prolongs the fast by half an hour.
Keep doing this until you stop thinking about eating all the time and are willing to challenge yourself for longer fasts.
2. Eating junk food
【Wrong approach】
Many people think that light fasting can solve many health problems, so they no longer pay attention to their daily diet. Indeed, intermittent fasting can improve overall health and reduce weight. But if you still don’t limit processed and high-sugar foods during eating, the damage caused by these junk diets to the body even exceeds the repairing effect of light fasting.
[Correct practice]
The best way to do this is to combine intermittent fasting with a ketogenic or low-carb diet. Eating real food ensures that your body receives more nutrients during meals.
The ketogenic and low-carbohydrate diet itself has a good weight loss effect. A moderate amount of protein and a high proportion of high-quality fat will increase satiety and make light fasting easier. The combination of the two can especially improve insulin sensitivity, make the body enter a ketogenic state faster, and accelerate fat burning.
3. Eating too little
【Wrong approach】
Fasting can easily be misinterpreted as dieting, so some people who are new to intermittent fasting deliberately restrict calories, thinking that they will lose weight faster by doing so. But in fact, they are dieting rather than light fasting.
Dieting is mainly to reduce food intake but does not limit the types of food, so most of what they eat is a diet with low nutritional content or high carbohydrates, just like the fruit diet, the high fructose-rich in fruit has a high effect. Glycemic Index (GI).
As a result of restricting calories without changing your diet, blood sugar and insulin levels fluctuate wildly, keeping you hungry for longer periods, slowing down your metabolism, and making weight loss more difficult.
[Correct practice]
Restricting the timing of your meals, not your calories, is intermittent fasting. Shorten and set a time frame for eating and fasting for the rest of the time.
And the diet is based on high-quality and high nutrition, which not only ensures that the intake of nutrients can meet the body’s basic metabolic needs but also reduces hunger, thereby prolonging the fasting time and allowing the body to enter the fat-burning state faster.
4. Lgnoring hidden carbs
Intermittent fasting is divided into dry fasting and wet fasting. Dry fasting means not eating or drinking anything during the fasting period, allowing the body to directly enter the fat-burning state, but this method is difficult for most people to accept, especially those who are new to light fasting. Wet fasting is when you can drink water or other beverages during fasting.
【Wrong approach】
Newcomers to light fasting will think that as long as they don’t eat, they are fasting, so they will drink a lot of fruit juice, coffee, honey water, etc. during the fasting period. And these drinks contain high sugar and carbohydrates, which will raise blood sugar and affect the effect of fasting.
Plus, many artificial sweeteners have been shown to raise blood sugar and insulin levels. And like any other sweetened beverage, it will hit the palate and keep you from craving sweets.
[Correct practice]
Avoid these drinks as much as possible. The safest is water, followed by green tea and black coffee, any liquid other than this may ruin your fasting plan.
If you’re also on a ketogenic or low-carb diet, you’ve probably heard of Bulletproof coffee, which is black coffee with butter, coconut oil, or MCT oil added.
Adding fat to coffee will help the body switch to fat metabolism, and it will not affect blood sugar and insulin. Drinking a cup of Bulletproof coffee in the morning can provide a quick energy boost, leaving you energized, increasing productivity, and reducing hunger pangs caused by fasting.
Conclusion
Intermittent fasting is a very effective method for weight management, and it has been proven to lower cholesterol, reduce inflammation in the body, stabilize blood sugar and insulin, prevent diabetes, and its autophagy mechanism plays an important role in delaying aging.
If you understand and avoid the common problems mentioned above, you have a good chance of achieving optimal weight loss with intermittent fasting. For most healthy people, light fasting is safe, but if you have metabolic diseases, are pregnant, or are breastfeeding, it is not recommended that you try it lightly, or consult a professional doctor first.
