There is no doubt, there are many different ways to lose weight today, but in the recent years, intermittent fasting has so grown so much in popularity that it has become one of the more common health and fitness trends. This way of fasting that involves regular short-term fasts has helped lots of people lose weight, and it is now considered by scientists and nutrition experts as the future for losing and keeping off weight.
Moreover, knowing how this diet plan works will not only motivate you to continue with it for an excellent result but will also open your eyes to how much it can help your weight loss goals. In this article, I teach you different ways intermittent fasting can help you lose weight fast.
What Exactly Is Intermittent Fasting?
Just as the name implies, intermittent fasting (IF) is a diet plan that involves fasting for a set period of time during the day. Here, you can fast between 16-20 consecutive hours in a day while you eat during the remaining 4-8 hours of the day.
During the fast, you can eat or drink zero calorie foods or simply go for foods low in calories, such as water, coffee, vegetables, and tea. When trying to shed off some extra pounds, it is great you do this fast as often as you like, not forgetting that the more time you spend with fasting every day, the better result you will see with weight loss.
Different Methods of Intermittent Fasting
There could be several methods of IF, but the three popular ones are:
How Does Intermittent Fasting Help You Lose Weight?
1. It alters hormonal balance for effective fat loss
When we eat our foods, our body converts excess energy and stores it up as fat in our body. When we don’t eat anything, the body has its way of making the stored fat more accessible to be used as an alternative source of energy. This could include making some changes in the activity of the nervous system and causing a change in your hormones.
When you fast:
Insulin level decreases dramatically and increases when we eat. Reduced levels of insulin in the body aids effective fat burning. Also, during fast, the level of the body’s growth hormone (HGH) increase to as much as 5 folds which thus promotes fat loss and muscle building.
Another major hormonal changes experienced during fasting is the increased amount of Norepinephrine during the fast. When we fast, more of this hormone is sent by the nervous system to the fat cells to break them down into free fatty acids which are forms that can be more easily burn as energy. Hence, aiding in quick and natural weight loss.
2. It helps you reduce calorie intake
Eating fewer calories than you burn is the roadmap to effective weight loss. Intermittent fasting will help reduce, and sometimes eliminate that hunger pangs and cravings and so help you consume fewer calories throughout the day.
3. It helps target belly fat
It could be very difficult to lose fat in the abdominal region as it contains more alpha-2 receptors which slow down fat burning than beta-2 receptors which tends to rev up the fat burning process. Because of reduced insulin levels, Intermittent fasting helps shut off the a2 receptors and thus promotes fat loss in the abdominal by activating more of beta-2 receptors.
With these excellent approaches of intermittent fasting to weight loss, it is then a weight loss diet worth giving a try for anyone that desires to lose weight fast and more naturally.
4. It makes healthy eating simpler
One of the woes of weight loss diets is the difficulty to stick with it. Intermittent fasting is a simple weight loss diet that makes it easy for you to stick with for a longer period compared to other weight loss diet plans. This is no doubt, a plus to you when it comes to losing and maintaining a healthy weight on a long-term.
5. It helps prevent muscle loss when dieting
The more muscles we have the more fat our body tends to burn. This is because the muscles consume more energy than other parts. However, one of the worst side effects of dieting is losing the muscles along with the fat. Studies have, however, confirmed that IF can help you prevent muscle loss when dieting.
