Is Intermittent Fasting Healthy?

What Is Intermittent Fasting?

It's an umbrella term for several different kinds of fasting. Basically, it's cycling between periods of abstaining from food, and periods of eating normally. It's not about starving the body, even though many people think so when they hear the word fasting. It may sound scary and unhealthy, but as with everything else in life — intermittent fasting has positive sides and downsides.

Ever since 1930's, scientist have been researching how calorie reduction and skipping meals affects the human body. One study from 2014 conducted on animal models found that fasting improved sensitivity to insulin, blood pressure, and inflammation. Recently, researchers have found that decreasing caloric intake by 30 to 40 percent can extend life span of mice by third or more. Intermittent fasting obviously improves health and reduces the risk of illness in animals, but unfortunately, not much research has been done on humans.

Benefits Of Fasting For Weight-Loss

After you eat a meal, the body requires some time to digest it. You have to absorb all the food before digesting it. The process can last 3-6 hours, depending on the kind of food and metabolism. During the fed state, the body is not really able to dip into the fat stores and actively burn the stored fat. During this time, the insulin levels are also high. The fasted state — the post-absorptive state when the body is done with all the digesting — occurs 8 to 12 hours later. Twelve hours after the last meal, one can say that they're in the fasted state when the body actually starts burning off fat. Most of us are not getting there often, except when we go to bed and don't eat right away the next day. Around 12 hours after the last meal, the insulin levels are very low and this is when you can capitalize on burning the stored fat.

Animal studies have shown numerous benefits of fasting, but it has to be taken with a grain of salt until we get more detailed research on humans.

READ Could Intermittent Fasting Help You Lose Weight?

Downsides Of Fasting

Fasting is not suitable for everyone. Some people feel bad without food, especially children, those with eating disorders, seniors and anyone with overall bad health. If you are someone who shivers and shakes when you skip a meal, it's not for you. Some people actually need less food than others and it's easier for them to fast. It all depends from blood count, weight, metabolism, even mental condition. For fasts that last longer than 16-20 hours, make sure you have physician to check on you because you can damage your health. Some medical doctors even claim fasting is not good for anything except for losing weight.

Different Approaches To Intermittent Fasting

There are numerous different approaches to intermittent fasting. People do it by choosing to fast 24 hours and eat normally the next day, some fast for 16 hours and have the 8-hour long eating window, some only refrain from solid food and consume fruit juices of tea … If you decide to try, it's really up to you to choose the way that best fits your needs.

Lean Gains' Approach

One of the famous ways of intermittent fasting has been popularized by Martin Berkhan, more known by his internet nickname Lean Gains. He's a famous internet personality who works as a nutrition consultant and a personal trainer. What he does is that he uses an 8-hour eating period, with 16 hours of fasting. This approach doesn't have anything to do with calorie restriction, changing what you're eating, or making any other modification except changing the patterns and the time of eating.

Most of us think about fasting as of caloric deficit and starving, and nobody like to feel that hungry. This approach is not hard, practitioners claim it's actually very easy and simple. You can play around with it or make it easier by eating couple of hours before sleep, sleeping for 8 hours and you're left with only 8 hours to fast every day. It doesn't matter in what time of the day you decide your eating window is going to be, it all depends on your lifestyle.

Juice Fasting

This method is also known as juice cleansing, and it's a controversial approach to fasting. These fasts usually last from several days to couple of weeks, and doctors around the world are not keen on this cleanse. The juice can't be found commercially, it's something you prepare at home from freshly squeezed fruit and vegetables.

Alternate Day Fasting

As the name says, doing this kind of fasting means you will eat like you usually do for one day, and eat little or nothing for the whole next day. This way is perhaps the hardest of all, because the non-eating period is the longest and it should be perhaps monitored by a healthcare professional.

READ Fasting For A Long, Healthy Life

Religious Fasting

There are many religions out there that have been using fasting as a physical and spiritual cleanse for thousands of years. Muslims fast for one month every year, and it's actually happening at the moment of writing this article. They fast from 2:30 AM to 8:30 PM approximately, meaning that they fast for 18 hours every day.

Jews have seven traditional fasting days that are universally recognized by the Jewish communities around the world. There are several other fast days dedicated to important and outstanding people in their history and culture. Christians fast differently, each according to their own church, but it's mostly on Wednesdays and Fridays. Some don't avoid food completely, but abstain from meat or fat. This period is very important for believers because it's not only physical cleaning, but also spiritual.

If you decide to try any of these fasts, make sure you listen to your body, and stop if you don't feel well. Like everything else, it probably has amazing benefits, but also downsides, so make sure not to go overboard with it.