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What Is Intermittent Fasting? |Best Guide For Beginners (2022)

What Is Intermittent Fasting? |Best Guide For Beginners (2021)

We are going over everything you need to know about intermittent fasting. We are calling it our intermittent fasting course. We’re going over what is intermittent fasting ? a guidance schedule ? the benefits of it ?

And then we’re going to answer some of your most frequently asked questions. Let’s jump in and get into the content and go over first,

What is intermittent fasting?

You may have heard of intermittent fasting. We’re going over exactly what it is and the potential benefits and how it can be done properly. It’s tough to pin point an exact definition.

But basically intermittent fasting is where you are not eating for a certain period of time and then you eat your entire calorical lotment for the day, within another period of time.

It can be done many different ways. We’ll  kind of go over how that’s done. Intermittent fasting has basically been around for centuries and it’s a vital part of many different religions. Examination on irregular fasting is immense and a significant part of the exploration shows extraordinary advantage to this training regardless of how it’s finished.

We’ll get into the many benefits later.There are potential benefits for not only your eyes and vision but the rest of your body as well and we’re going over. Some of those Intermittent fasting can be successfully performed in a few different ways as we stated before Everyone is different in any fasting practice should be discussed with your doctor before hand.

Also women react differently to fasting than men. We’ll discuss a few things that may need to be modified for women.

Intermittent fasting guide and schedule

Let’s get into the intermittent fasting guide and schedule as far as fasting times and a couple of different ways of how to fast.

16-8 Fasting

As stated previously there are many different types of fasting that you can do and the most popular ways intermittent fast include the time restricted feeding or what’s called a 16-8 fast.

That’s where you fast for 16 hours and then you eat your entire caloric allotment of food  within an 8-hour period.

Often this means not eating anything after dinner which is around 7 or 8 PM and then not eating until lunch the next day. This is often the best type of intermittent fasting to start with.

EAT – STOP – EAT Fasting

There’s also the eat stop eat.This is where you choose one day out of  the week to fast for 24 hours. This would include fasting from dinner one night to dinner the next night.

5-2 fasting

There’s also the 5-2 fasting. Eating normally but healthfully for 5 days of the week and then fasting for two non-consecutive days of the week. Some people may eat nothing on their fasting days and others may eatonly a small amount around 500 calories.

Now, for women the above plans are not always simple Hormone fluctuations can easily drive a woman into starvation mode which causes so much hunger and overeating due to ramped up levels of hunger hormones which are leptin and ghrelin.

Women will often need to back off on intermittent fasting or just ease their bodies into it and you can work with your doctor on this.

TIPS  FOR WOMEN

  • A few tips for women choose only 2 to 3 non-consecutive days out of the week to begin overnight fasting so for example you would do it on Tuesday and Thursday.
  • Don’t begin fasting every night of the week. Because that might be a little bit too much for your body to handle. Start by fasting for 12 hours from after dinner at 7 PM to the next morning at your 7 AM breakfast and then increase your fasting time from there one hour a week so after a few weeks.
  • You’re able to do the whole 16-hour fast a couple of times a week. On the days that you fast you can feel free to work out. You probably don’t want to run a marathon on the day that you’re fasting or anything like that but do what your body is used to don’t do anything that your body is not used to.
  • Also drink plenty of water during your fast. Unsweetened coffee or tea is totally fine as well. For women it is good to note that you should not fast if you’re pregnant as fasting can deplete your nutrient stores and if you’re breast feeding you need to discuss that with your doctor as well.

Intermittent fasting benefits

The first benefit is decreased  inflammation. Occasional however steady fasting brings down the degrees of oxidative worry all through your body. This means your body is better able to fight free radicals and inflammation A 2015 study found that a longer duration of overnight fasting was associated with decreased inflammatory markers  and as we know inflammation plays a huge role in disease.

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The next benefit is that it promotes weight loss Fasting allows your body to use fat stores as fuel instead of sugar. Your body will use sugar or glucose first and then store what’s left over as glycogen without sugar around like when you’re fasting your body moves straight to glycogen and will then use fat as fuel.This can greatly contribute to weight lossThat’s why intermittent fasting helps promote weight loss.

The third benefit is it helps manage bloodsugar. Intermittent fasting allows your body to more easily process glucose and helps regulate your insulin and blood sugar levels when we prevent a build up of insulin we allow our bodies to handle sugar more effectively. This is great news for people with diabetes but of course work with your doctor if you are a diabetic.

The next one is there’s protection for your brain and your heart. Some studies have shown  that the anti-inflammatory effects of intermittent fasting may slow  neurode generative diseases like Alzheimer’s and they may also decrease certain contributors to heart disease which is awesome.

Fasting helps the body with autophagy which is responsible for the body’s cellular turn overand due to pretty much everything we’ve  talked about.

The final benefits are it helps increase your body’s energy. It  lowers your bad cholesterol and then of course since it’s protecting your brain and heart. It’s going to help boost your brain function and improve your memory.

What can you drink during intermittent fasting?

The first thing that you want to realize is that you want to drink things that have no calories that means throw out those sugary coffee beverages and just really sticking to water is kind of key but we’re going to go over some other things that you can drink as well.

COFFEE

On top of water which we recommend drinking a lot of any way. You can drink black coffee. No sugary coffee beverages just plain organic black coffee because it has no calories. Leave out sugar. Leave out artificial sweeteners.

Leave out  milk and leave out cream but just know that drinking black coffee on an empty stomach can also cause irritability anxiousness, restlessness, and stomachache just because it is caffeinated.

TEA

Another thing that you can drink is tea. Tea usually has no calories in it. The same thing you have to leave out all the crap. The sugar, cream, and artificial sweeteners.

GREEN TEA

We recommend an organic black tea organic herbal tea that has no caffeine or an organic green tea.

APPLE CIDER VINEGAR

The fourth thing you can drink is drinking apple cider vinegar. Apple cider vinegar has a lot of great benefits in it and you can just add a tablespoon or less to a glass of water. It helps aid in digestion. Helps aid with weight loss and other great topical benefits as well on your skin.

Drinks to avoid while your intermittent fasting

The drinks to avoid while your intermittent fasting is pretty much all diet pops, all pops or sodas in general. All drinks like Gatorade or any other sports drinks of course alcohol, coconut water, and milk. We recommend avoiding dairy altogether almond milk or any other milk alternative any sweetened coffee or tea beverages and any juice.

What should you eat while intermittent fasting?

This is a pretty short question because  while you’re intermittent fasting. You should be eating nothing. You want to  consume as close to zero calories as possible during your 12 to 16 hours fasting windows that means no snack before bedtime. No 3 AM snack.

Nothing You don’t want to consume any calories during your fasting window. Once you’re done fasting and you’re ready to feed then you would want to eat as healthy as possible.

One of our favorite ways to break a fast is to drink a big green smoothie. I’m drinking it right now Exactly. That’s our favorite thing to break our fast and then the rest of the day, We eat really healthily. We eat fruit. We eat tons of vegetables and healthy grains if that’s in our menu for the day.

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