What is Intermittent Fasting and Why Would You Do It?

Intermittent fasting is not a diet, it's a pattern of eating. It's a way of scheduling your meals so that you get the most out of them. Intermittent fasting doesn’t change what you eat, it changes when you eat.

Why is it worthwhile to change when you’re eating?

Well, most notably, it’s a great way to get lean without going on a crazy diet or cutting your calories down to nothing. In fact, most of the time you'll try to keep your calories the same when you start intermittent fasting. (Most people eat bigger meals during a shorter time frame.) Additionally, intermittent fasting is a good way to keep muscle mass on while getting lean.

With all that said, the main reason people try intermittent fasting is to lose fat. We'll talk about how intermittent fasting leads to fat loss in a moment.

Perhaps most importantly, intermittent fasting is one of the simplest strategies there are for taking bad weight off while keeping good weight on because it requires very little behavior change. This is a very good thing because it means intermittent fasting falls into the category of “simple enough that you'll actually do it, but meaningful enough that it will actually make a difference.”

How Does Intermittent Fasting Work?

To understand how intermittent fasting leads to fat loss we first need to understand the difference between the fed state and the fasted state.

Your body is in the fed state when it is digesting and absorbing food. Typically, the fed state starts when you begin eating and lasts for three to five hours as your body digests and absorbs the food you just ate. When you are in the fed state, it's very hard for your body to burn fat because your insulin levels are high.

After that timespan, your body goes into what is known as the post–absorptive state, which is just a fancy way of saying that your body isn’t processing a meal. The post–absorptive state lasts until 8 to 12 hours after your last meal, which is when you enter the fasted state. It is much easier for you body to burn fat in the fasted state because your insulin levels are low.

When you're in the fasted state your body can burn fat that has been inaccessible during the fed state.

Because we don't enter the fasted state until 12 hours after our last meal, it's rare that our bodies are in this fat burning state. This is one of the reasons why many people who start intermittent fasting will lose fat without changing what they eat, how much they eat, or how often they exercise. Fasting puts your body in a fat burning state that you rarely make it to during a normal eating schedule.

The Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

Fat loss is great, but it isn't the only reason to try intermittent fasting.

1. Intermittent fasting makes your day simpler.

I'm big on behavior change, simplicity, and reducing stress. Intermittent fasting provides additional simplicity to my life that I really enjoy. When I wake up, I don't worry about breakfast. I just grab a glass of water and start my day.

I enjoy eating and I don't mind cooking, so eating three meals a day was never a hassle for me. However, intermittent fasting allows me to eat one less meal, which also means planning one less meal, cooking one less meal, and stressing about one less meal. It makes life a bit simpler and I like that.

2. Intermittent fasting helps you live longer.

Scientists have long known that restricting calories is a way of lengthening life. From a logical standpoint, this makes sense. When you’re starving, your body finds ways to extend your life.

There’s just one problem: who wants to starve themselves in the name of living longer?

I don’t know about you, but I’m interested in enjoying a long life. Starving myself doesn’t sound that appetizing.

The good news is that intermittent fasting activates many of the same mechanisms for extending life as calorie restriction. In other words, you get the benefits of a longer life without the hassle of starving.

Way back in 1945 it was discovered that intermittent fasting extended life in mice. (Here's the study). More recently, this study found that alternate day intermittent fasting led to longer lifespans.

3. Intermittent fasting is much easier than dieting.

The reason most diets fail isn’t because we switch to the wrong foods, it’s because we don’t actually follow the diet over the long term. It's not a nutrition problem, it's a behavior change problem.

This is where intermittent fasting shines because it's remarkably easy to implement once you get over the idea that you need to eat all the time. For example, this study found that intermittent fasting was an effective strategy for weight loss in obese adults and concluded that “subjects quickly adapt” to an intermittent fasting routine.

THE COFFEE GIMMICK

People that start to practice intermittent fasting lifestyle in the initial phase of the transitioning from their usual 3-4 meals a day and 4-5 hour non-eating window will say that is is hard not eat the first 3 or 4 hours of the day when you wake up (depends on your selected eating window) because it's not the way most people eat.

This argument is fair enough, actually I myself had struggled to transition into the fasting lifestyle (notice that it is a lifestyle of choice and not a diet).

THE KEY

The thing that you want to do is drink a cup of black coffee after an hour when you wake up. You won't believe how much coffee will suppress your appetite and prolong your fasting window. Now you might think - "well, you said that I can't eat anything , so what's this about"? Well your'e right, you can't eat anything that contains high caloric numbers and you shouldn't. But that is not the case with black coffee, black coffee does not contain high caloric numbers which is one the reasons to choose it and further more it suppresses your appetite so you do not feel hunger thus you don't break your fast window too soon.

Take a care to try out this way of eating and hopefully increase the quality of your life by simply making adjustments to your daily eating habbits