By Reducing meal frequency, such as intermittent fasting, works by reducing your meal and snack consumption in a strict window of time, naturally decreasing your caloric intake. This is the key to weight loss and maintenance long term.
Why is IF so good?
IF also increases levels of norepinephrine, which is a hormone and neurotransmitter that can boost your metabolism, increasing caloric burn during the day. (1)
Fasting also reduces levels of insulin, which is the key hormone involved in blood sugar management. Decreasing these levels can boost fat burning and increase weight loss.
A great benefit (which works wonders for me personally) is that fasting can help your body retain muscle mass more effectively, than if you were to just pursue a caloric restricted diet. And lets not forget that fasting increases your muscle mass too.
Intermittent fasting provides not only fat loss benefits, but also helps you to achieve and maintain your muscle building goals. This is a win win on all levels for achieving optimal body composition.
Tapping into ketosis
If you can trigger ketosis whilst on fasting, you will further increase your chances of burning body fat. This is of course, triggered by your diet, which would be high in fat, and extremely low in carbohydrates.
Ketosis forces your body to burn fat as fuel instead of carbs. This only occurs when your body has depleted it stores of glucose – which the body finds most easiest to tap into for energy. This shift does take a bit or experimentation, and can initially leave you feeling lethargic and weak. But the health and fat loss benefits certainly outweigh a little bit of discomfort.
The combination of keto and IF allows your body to enter ketosis a lot faster. This is a great option if you have quite a lot of body fat to lose.
4 health benefits of Intermittent fasting
You probably wont’ see many eating plans have this much leverage over your longevity and health. IF is so beneficial on a multitude of levels.
- Increase your longevity. Intermittent fasting has shown to increase life span and slow the signs of ageing (although these studies have been performed on animals) (2)
- Decreasing inflammation. Fasting is great at reducing your overall inflammation markers, and helps you with your exercise recovery. (3)
- Increasing your levels of Human Growth Hormone. IF naturally increases your HGH levels which meals your bodies metabolism becomes more effective, whilst increasing muscle mass in the process. This is truly a magical hormone that you want to tap into for life. It’s only activated when you fast. (4)
- Support blood sugar control. People with diabetes (or the onset of diabetes) can use IF to control and even diminish their symptoms, as it leads to a significant decrease in blood sugar levels. (4)
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