Intermittent fasting (IF) has become a popular method for losing weight, boosting energy levels, improving cognitive function and perhaps even protecting against cancer. We have many people on the program practicing this method of eating with brilliant results.
What is Intermittent Fasting?
Intermittent fasting is going for a select period of time without consuming food. According to Dr. Joseph Mercola, to be effective the length of your fast should be 16 hours – only eating within a specific 8 hour window. For example, this could mean eating only between the hours of 11am and 7pm. Essentially, this means you would skip breakfast and make lunch your first meal of the day instead.
However, you can adjust the ‘eating’ window to make it work for you:
- If you start eating at: 7AM, stop eating and start fasting at 3pm
- If you start eating at: 11AM, stop eating and start fasting at 7pm
- If you start eating at: 2PM, stop eating and start fasting at 10pm
Intermittent fasting was also a natural part of the modern hunter gatherers’ lifestyle due to seasonality, climate and fluctuations in food availability.
Why Intermittent fast?
Fasting puts our body into a fat-burning state that we rarely achieve during a normal eating schedule because we don’t enter the ‘fasted state’ until 12 hours after our last meal. Although it’s rare that our bodies are in this fat-burning state, when we are in it, it’s much easier for our bodies to burn fat because insulin levels are lower. This is one of the reasons people who practise intermittent fasting can lose fat without changing what they eat, or how often they exercise. Fasting also gives your body a break from digesting foods and allows it to focus on other things like general healing, repair and detoxification.
Here’s a list of some of the health benefits associated with fasting:
- Helps you lose weight without feeling hungry
- Decreases metabolic, heart disease and diabetes risks
- Reduces inflammation
- Increases insulin and leptin sensitivity
- Increases your ability to become fat adapted
- Helps fight free radical damage
- Supports healthy gut bacteria
- Improves cognitive function
- Increases energy levels
- Improves blood sugar balance.
Fasting is also thought to help with the following conditions such as Cancer, Brain fog, Fatty liver disease, Obesity, Weight loss resistance, Gut health issues, Joint inflammation such as arthritis and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS).
By adopting IF in with your Program, we believe you will see even better and faster fat burning losses. Do what works best for you as all our SLIMTOX programs are designed to show you how easy it is to make life changing choices for your optimal health and well being.
