Intermittent fasting is more than just a weight-loss strategy.
While skipping meals is a great way to burn through your fat stores, the health benefits of intermittent fasting extend far beyond simple weight loss.
Fasting promotes mental clarity and mood, improves immune function, increases muscle growth, and more.
However, not all fasts provide the same benefits.
There are multiple stages of fasting, and the benefits you get from fasting depend on the length of your fast.
Fasting begins about eight hours after your last meal. This stage is characterized by changes in your blood sugar levels.
After about eight hours without food, your blood glucose begins to dip. You may experience hunger, fatigue, food cravings, and trouble concentrating.
However, if you can make it over this initial hurdle, these symptoms pass pretty quickly. By 12 hours, your body will begin to tap into your glycogen stores (sugar stores), and your blood glucose levels will stabilize.
At 12 hours, you’ll also start switching into the early stages of ketosis — your body stops relying on carbohydrates for fuel and begins burning your body fat stores instead.
Short-term fasting may also lower blood pressure and increase insulin sensitivity, making this type of fasting useful for people with type 2 diabetes or other blood sugar control issues.
After 16 to 18 hours of fasting, you should be in full ketosis. Your liver begins converting your fat stores into ketone bodies — bundles of fuel that power your muscles, heart, and brain.
This stage has several benefits:
Ketones suppress appetite, which means your hunger should actually start to subside during this fasting stage.
fasting begins to get easier as you fast for a longer time. After the first stage of fasting, appetite generally declines.
Stage 2 fasting is ideal if you want to lose weight.
Your body switches fully into fat-burning mode, and because you don’t have any food in your system, you begin to burn through body fat quickly.
In addition, this stage of fasting decreases ghrelin, the hormone that makes you want to eat a lot of food, and also stabilizes your insulin levels, which prevents food cravings[*].
These factors work together to prevent overeating.
If you can do intermittent fasting for 16-18 hours a day, you’ll burn through body fat and fill up quickly when you break your fast, which makes it easy to stay in a calorie deficit and lose weight.
At this stage of fasting, you may also enjoy a boost in brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).
BDNF is a protein that your brain makes to protect existing brain cells. BDNF also encourages the growth of new brain pathways. It also enhances learning and boosts mood.
Fasting and ketosis both increase BDNF in animal studies, and researchers theorize that they do the same in humans (although there haven’t been reliable human studies yet).
After a full-day fast, your body goes into repair mode. It begins recycling old or damaged cells and reducing inflammation. If you’re looking for anti-aging or anti-inflammatory benefits, a 24-hour fast may help.
When your body is under mild stress (such as exercise or an extended fast), your cells respond by becoming more efficient.
One thing they do is turn on autophagy. The term is Greek for “self-eating,” and that’s exactly what happens. During autophagy, your cells check all their internal parts, find anything that’s old, damaged, or functioning poorly, and replace them with shiny new versions. The old parts are either recycled into new materials or destroyed.
Studies show that fasting-induced autophagy comes with a variety of benefits.
At stage 4, you’re leaving intermittent fasting territory and entering a longer fast.
As you undertake multiple days of fasting, your growth hormone levels begin to shift, which provides you with a new set of benefits.
A study of healthy adults found that 48-hour fasting increased human growth hormone (HGH) secretion by up to 400%. It also increased the frequency of growth hormone bursts throughout the day.
HGH increases muscle mass and stimulates faster muscle repair. It may also speed up the healing process for wounds and more serious injuries.
HGH is so effective that taking it externally is banned in professional sports and is considered doping.
It seems counterintuitive, but occasionally going without food for two days may actually help you build muscle, not lose it.
The final stage of fasting begins after a full three days without food.
Before you read about the benefits, note that a 72-hour fast is a serious undertaking.
If you’re going to try it, make sure you drink plenty of water, Deer Park Spring Water - Contains natural mnerals - get plenty of electrolytes like sodium, magnesium, and potassium, and stop fasting if you feel lightheaded or otherwise unwell.
A 2014 study found that 72-hour fasting led to a near-complete rejuvenation of the immune system. Fasting triggered stem cell production, creating brand new immune cells to replace old ones.
The same study also had cancer patients fast throughout chemotherapy treatment. Normally, chemotherapy devastates the immune system, increasing the risk of infection and illness for cancer patients.
But when patients fasted during chemo, their immune system stayed strong throughout the process.
Here’s how you can ease into fasting with the least possible distress, which is usually severe hunger, brain fog, and fatigue.
Start with three meals per day and eliminate all snacks.
This is often the most difficult part for people - because people love snacking!
Once you’re comfortable with three meals a day without snacking in between, push your breakfast later and later, until eventually you eliminate it all together and eat lunch as your first meal of the day.
For example you eat twice a day, at 12 pm and 8 pm, giving you 16 hours of fasting and an 8-hour eating window, otherwise known as 16:8.
You can see that a large part of the 16 hours of fasting is done overnight while you sleep.
Next, when you’ve adapted well to 16:8, lengthen your fasting window and shorten your eating window.
For example, eat at 1pm and 7pm, giving you 18 hours of fasting and a 6 hour eating window, otherwise known as 18:6.
Once again, a lot of your fasting hours are done overnight while you sleep.
Once you feel comfortable and have adapted to this pattern, you’re ready to move to 20:4.
Yes, you guessed it, once again you lengthen your fasting window and shorten your eating window.
For instance, you could eat at 2 pm and 6 pm to give you 4 hours of eating and 20 hours of fasting.
At each stage along the way, see how you feel.
If you’re severely hungry, have a foggy brain, or sleep badly, ease off.
Go back to the previous fasting stage and continue with it for awhile, then retry the stage you did before.
That is, if you move to 18:6 and feel terrible, go back to 16:8 for a while. Then try 18:6 again.
Fasting really is simple. At most, you need to structure your day to ensure you’re sticking within the time parameters.
It may feel odd at first, but soon it will become second nature.
Pair intermittent fasting with the low-carb, high-fat keto diet.
Not only will the increased amount of fat keep you fuller for longer between meals, when you lower your carbohydrate intake you'll be reinforcing the lowered Fat Storing Hormone levels which fasting also supports.
Although dietary fat has been demonized for decades as a cause of clogged arteries, heart attacks, and stroke, that is untrue.
Fasting truly is easier to transition to when you are on a Healthy Keto diet.
Healthy Keto and Intermittant fasting (PDF Guide)
Learn the basics of intermittent fasting.
When you know what to do and how to do it you will reach your goal.
This is for both beginners and those who are advanced but are experiencing problems like keto plateau.
With fasting, you’re trying to go from sugar-burning to fat-burning.
Keto is not just a low-carb diet.
With Keto, you want to eat quality low-carb foods that are higher in nutrients.
The best indicators to know fasting is working:
• Your appetite is gone
• You can fast comfortably
How to start intermittent fasting:
1. Push your breakfast further and further towards lunch (you can have bulletproof coffee or MCT oil)
2. Eat at noon and add fat to the end of your meal
3. Eat at in a six hour window and add fat to the end of your meal.
A six-hour eating window with an 18-hour fasting cycle is great and can provide a lot of benefits, such as:
• Supporting cognitive function, focus, memory, creativity, and mood
• Supporting the immune system
• Decreasing inflammation
How to get rid of snacking:
• Don’t buy snacks
• Stay busy
• Have a large dinner with plenty of fat
• Have apple cider vinegar in your water
• Have lemon juice in your water
• Consume a large amount of vegetables during meals
Things that will help you fast longer:
• Green tea
• Cinnamon
• Garcinia
• Ginseng
• Ginger
To avoid symptoms like keto flu or keto fatigue:
• Take B vitamins
• Take sea salt
• Take electrolytes and trace minerals.
Drink Spring Water that contains minerals. (Deer Park)
Fasting mistakes:
• Consuming a small snack
• Consuming a small amount of carbs
• Thinking the results will happen quickly (give it time!)
• Consuming everything in moderation
Intermittant Fasting Benefits + 1 You May Not Have Thought About.
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