intermittent fasting
What is intermittent fasting?
The modernity of today's world causes the growing epidemic of obesity and overweight by rising sitting all day behind a desk and decreasing physical activity. Because obesity and overweight put the risk of developing various chronic diseases, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease, the importance of weight control has become more than before. In this regard, nutritionists recommend daily calorie restriction and following a healthy and stimulating lifestyle to control weight. However, many studies have examined other diets, including intermittent fasting, and their effect on weight loss. Most of these studies claim that this diet can lead to weight loss, reduce the incidence of chronic diseases and increase life expectancy.
Intermittent fasting reduces the time available for eating to 8 hours or less per day by creating a "time limit on the daily meal interval." In other words, this diet includes repetitive patterns of eating and fasting and has nothing to do with "what" you eat, but only the "time" of eating in this type of diet is important! In this way, for example, in the 8/16 model, a person determines an 8-hour interval during the day, and then only during this interval is he allowed to consume food. You may ask, what about the remaining 16 hours of the day? In the intermittent fasting diet, the rule is that during the fasting period, you are only allowed to eat non-calorie foods such as water, tea , coffee, etc
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How to lose weight with intermittent fasting?
The food we eat enters the bloodstream in smaller units after being digested by digestive enzymes. Carbohydrates, especially grains and simple sugars (such as rice and bread) break down to glucose and consume by cells. If our cells do not use this glucose, the body stores this extra energy as fat. But glucose enters the cells only in the presence of insulin. Insulin is secreted by pancreatic cells and, as an anabolic hormone, causes fat to be produced and stored in cells.
Also, the body stores glucose in the form of liver and muscle glycogen. As long as this glycogen is present, the body will not burn fat!
Note that the liver can store about 100 to 120 grams of glycogen, and when this glycogen would consume, the body enters the fat burning phase.
The cells store fat when insulin would not secrete like eating a snack between meals. On this account, if we can keep insulin levels low, we will achieve our desired weight loss. So, it is clear that the theory of weight loss by intermittent fasting is lowering insulin levels and maintaining this level for consecutive hours, which will cause fat burning.
Some types of intermittent fasting:
1- 16/8: includes 16 hours of fasting and 8 hours of feeding.
2- 20/4: Only 4 hours of food interval. This type of intermittent fasting is compact, to begin with when you are used to 8/16 for several months and only for a short time.
3- Diet 2-5: 2 days a week, you are only allowed to eat 500 to 600 kcal. On the other days of the week, consume energy according to your needs and feelings of hunger.
