How intermittent fasting works for beginnersAs our standard of living improves, material abundance and the temptation of food are everywhere, and we eat more and more and more mixed things. With this comes soaring weight, and weight loss has become an almost impossible task. Before you plan to give up on weight loss, try a ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting. These two diets have been prevalent in Europe and the United States for many years now, benefiting millions of people around the world.
This article focuses on intermittent fasting. You will learn how to gradually adapt your body to starvation and safely transition to a fat-burning state. You can choose the right time to eat at will, completely independent of time, place, and diet. Whether you are a meat eater or a vegetarian, intermittent fasting can help you achieve your weight loss goals while increasing your metabolism.
How to do Intermittent Fasting from Scratch?
1. Weeks 1-2: Adaptation period
If you are completely unfamiliar with light fasting or have never tried it before, it is recommended that you start with “time-limited eating”. Time-bound means that you give yourself a window during which you can eat and not eat anything else. The easiest and simplest period to start is 12 hours, for example, 7 am-7 pm, 8 am-8 pm, and 9 am-9 pm……
Adjust according to your routine or work hours. You can eat during this time frame, otherwise, fast, including all calorie-containing diets such as coffee, sugary drinks, nuts, etc. During these 14 days, your body will gradually adapt to a slight hunger.
It’s not really that you’re hungry, but that your brain has been seriously addicted to food for a long time, especially since sweets and carbohydrate diets are more likely to stir up cravings in the body and brain. During this time, your body is quietly changing, most notably as blood sugar levels begin to stabilize and insulin sensitivity begins to gradually recover.
2. Weeks 3-4: Control your bedtime eating
Once you have mastered the rhythm of restricting your eating, you have successfully taken the first step. The next step is to coordinate your diet so that you can stop eating within three hours before bedtime. This is primarily to empty your stomach for a healthy sleep and wake cycle, which we call the “circadian rhythm.
Frequent late nights, or lack of sleep, can cause hormonal chaos and increase hunger levels in your body, causing you to eat a lot even at night. When you eat late at night, your liver, intestines, and fat cells become excited, and your body becomes more active in converting glucose into fat for storage.
To keep the circadian rhythms of the brain and body organs in line, it is best to stop eating three to four hours before bedtime. Give your intestines plenty of time to digest and clear out.
3. Week 5-6: Reduce eating time to 8-9 hours
By now, if you have been following the above two time periods, your body should have adapted to this new way of eating and will not be thinking about eating anytime and anywhere as it did before. Then come on and accept the challenge to extend the fasting period a little longer. Shorten the period for eating from 12 hours to 8-9 hours.
During these two weeks, your main task is to master and gradually adapt to longer fasts. Starting from the 16th hour of fasting, the body initiates the cellular autophagy mechanism, blood ketone levels will rise significantly, and fat burning is officially turned on.
During this process, you will see significant weight loss, while other health problems caused by obesity will gradually improve. Light fasting can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, etc.
One study showed that a moderate daily fast, regardless of your diet, reduced the recurrence rate of breast cancer by 40%. The fact that fasting can have such results, even without changing the structure of your diet, shows how much of a health impact it can have.
4. Weeks 7-11: Continue to extend the fasting period
By week 6 of the light fasting diet, you should have seen very significant weight loss results. Now you can try to shorten the eating time again, your body may not be as sensitive as it was at the beginning.
During these weeks, your goal is OMAD (One Meal A Day), or 24-hour fasting. Gradually increasing the duration of the fast can increase your body’s tolerance until you can tolerate not eating for a day. Eat only one meal for the entire day, either breakfast, lunch, dinner, or any time of the day. This one meal is the source of all your calories for the entire day, so make sure it’s quality.
A ketogenic or low-carb diet is best. This diet is higher in good fats and protein, while the low percentage of carbohydrate intake will not spike your blood sugar while increasing satiety and making your light fasting easier to do.
You will have a noticeable feeling of hunger during this period, but the feeling is like a wave and will not last more than 5-10 minutes. You can drink more water or concentrate on other things and the hunger will soon pass. In addition, coconut oil can help you reduce hunger and increase blood ketone levels, speeding up weight loss. The biggest benefit of one meal a day is that it can significantly increase HDL cholesterol (good cholesterol) levels and lower triglycerides and body weight.
5. Week 12: 72 hours or more of fasting
The most most most people can do is go 24 hours without eating. However, for those with experience, longer fasts can be attempted. The most common is a 36-72 hour-long fast. You are still on the downward spiral of weight, more emotionally stable, more energetic, and more productive in what you do.
Conclusion
Understanding and mastering how to properly execute intermittent fasting is not far from weight loss success and improved health! While everyone adapts to fasting for a different amount of time, it is not difficult to stick to. It is especially effective when used in conjunction with a ketogenic/low-carb diet. Start today and try this new way of eating, stop being controlled by food, and give your body a break, you will find that losing weight is easy!
