Intermittent fasting has become a topic of interest in health and fitness in recent years due to its potential benefits for weight loss, reduced insulin sensitivity, and overall improved health markers. But, how does intermittent fasting really work and why is it so effective?
Different types of fasting
Fasting is defined as the voluntary abstinence or strong limitation of caloric ingestion for a limited period of time. Typically, a ratio of 16:8 hours is fasted, but there are alternative methods to fasting, e.g., alternate-day fasting, which is where the calorie intake every other day is significantly lower than the day before.
The 5:2 fast is when on 2 non-consecutive days there is a considerable decrease in calories (roughly down to 600 kcals each day) within the week and the remaining 5 days of the week have a normal dietary intake.
For the purposes of this blog, we’ll discuss 16:8 intermittent fasting as this is the most common form.
Intermittent fasting benefits
There are numerous proposed benefits to intermittent fasting, mainly weight and fat loss for most general gym goers. But there are numerous other benefits to the technique as well.
This includes improvements in health markers such as:
- Decreased blood pressure
- Decreased inflammatory markers
- Reduced circulating insulin
- Improved blood lipid density
- Decreased oxidative stress
The weight loss and fat loss mechanisms are fairly simple. The time restriction on eating simply puts a limit on the number of calories that can be ingested within a certain period of time, most likely creating a calorie deficit.
You could eat like an absolute horse and have nothing but processed, high-calorie, low-nutrient foods within an 8-hour window and you’d still put on a tonne of weight.
The restriction on time only narrows the opportunity to ingest food in general. It’s not the timing itself, it’s still the quality and quantity of calories within that window. Whole and less processed foods keep us satiated for longer. Feeling full from whole and unprocessed foods makes it much more difficult to overeat calories and enter a calorie surplus.
One massive benefit to this is that most of us eat some of these higher calorie foods later into the evening (late snacking whilst watching TV or a film). This dispels one of the myths that still circulate in the fitness world: eating after 8pm will suddenly ruin your physique and cause you to gain a tonne of weight. Eating a cookie, or banana, or pizza at 8:01pm instead of 7:59pm will not change the caloric value of that food.
Tips for intermittent fasting and how to succeed
We think if it works for you, then definitely give it a go, but there are a few considerations which must be taken into account before undergoing any new nutritional practice.
Firstly, seek professional advice and ensure this is the right course of action for you to take.
Secondly, you have to take into consideration what your goal is. Do you want to optimise your health or performance? Is it for health, to lose body fat, to lose weight, or to gain muscle?
If your goal is to reduce body fat, you’re probably going to assume you’ve got to cut out breakfast, dinner, or massively restrict your eating window. Then you’ll feel really hungry, tired, and exhausted and then give up in 4 weeks.
But, just like anything we try, you need to buy into the process as well as ease into the process:
- Start by giving yourself a target to start and finish eating food throughout the day. Consider starting your fast at 9am if you normally eat at 7am. Then finish eating at 7pm instead of 8pm. This will reduce your eating window by 3 hours without having to put a lot of effort in.
- Then start to reduce this window by 30–60 minutes over the next few weeks. Before you know it, you’ll be fasting for longer.
- Ensure you’re getting a sufficient number of calories within this window so that it supports your goal (don’t have your calorie deficit so low that you can’t function and can’t maintain gym performance).
- Track how you’re feeling. Check in on your gym performance, your sleep, recovery, nutrition quality, and how you’re generally feeling. These are all markers which will change when transitioning to fasting. Ensure that you’re aware that there might be a negative effect on some of these markers, so bear with it and ensure you’ve got support from a coach.
- Finally, fast in the part of the day that is less intense for you. Make fasting work for you. If you train in the morning, then stack your food in the morning ready for your session and fast in the evening, and vice versa for the evening.
To summarise, we think fasting can be a great fat loss tool as well as really make improvements to one’s health if it’s needed. It has to work with your lifestyle, so ensure you think about what is going to work best for you, as well as seek professional help to make this a safe practice.
Peace and love to you all.
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