Intermittent fasting is a health method, where you have an eating window in a day, and the rest of the time you drink only zero-calorie drinks. You can drink water, black coffee, and tea.
Always consult your doctor before starting your fasting journey.
Fasting is not recommended for:
- children under 18 years
- if pregnant or breastfeeding
- if have problems with blood sugar
Also, you should not force fast. If you do not feel well, you should interrupt and eat something healthy and light. A heavy meal right after fasting may be a bad idea. Measuring your blood sugar and ketones is one way to monitor your health during fasting. Your blood sugar should not go under 40, and ketones should be under 7.
What health benefits fasting can offer?
Some really cool benefits of fasting:
- Autopaghy – cleans up damaged cells in the body.
- Helps with weightloss – promotes growth hormone which is a fat-burning hormone.
- Improves metabolic function.
- Brain booster – improves memory and mood.
- Lowers blood sugar levels.
- Helps improve blood pressure.
- Beauty trick – slows down aging and improves skin health.
- Aid several chronic diseases.
How fasting works?
There are no specific times of day when you eat and when you fast. You should start slow and find the best practices for your body. You can for example eat your last meal at 6 PM and skip breakfast, then your first meal would be lunch and you get really nice and long fast. Or if you feel you need to have breakfast in the mornings, you can eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner in a 10-hour window and start your fast after the last meal. You still get a good 14-hour fast.
You have 24 hours a day and just need to find a timeline for fasting that best fits your schedule.Â
If you are used to eating all the time during the day, maybe you eat something right before you go to sleep and right after you wake up the next day, you need to start slow and just day by day stretch a little your fasting time. If it feels hard, 10 hours is good to start from and grow it gradually.
Intermittent fasting can also be done as OMAD, one meal a day. This is as simple as that, you eat one big healthy meal in a day. If fasting is new to you, the preferred method is that you start with a shorter fasting style.
Personally, I like to vary my fasting so I do 16:8, 18:6, 20:4, and OMAD depending on the day. I have also learned to read the signs my body gives, and if I don’t feel well, I cut the fasting short. And of course, I have days when I eat whenever I want. Exercise is possible when fasting, long walks are ok, but we don’t recommend heavy exercise during fasting.
Hormones and fasting
It may not be good to fast every day, and you should consider your cycle. It’s not good to be fasting one week before the period, cycle days from 21 to 28. Dr. Mindy Pelz has some great articles about hormones and fasting.
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