Intermittent fasting does not describe a special form of typical fasting. Intermittent fasting, on the other hand, refers to a certain eating rhythm. One eats thus – in comparison to the genuine chamfered – very well, only evenly at certain times and above all only in certain time intervals. One changes thereby between times of the normal food intake and the food parental leave. The risks of age-related diseases are reduced, weight loss is easier and one lives longer.
Fasting days relieve and improve health
Although overnourishment is known to promote cardiovascular disease and is associated with increased disease and mortality rates, many people find it difficult to control or even reduce their food intake.
For this reason, the nutritional habits of our ancestors have once again become the focus of numerous research projects. One would like to find out whether health-promoting effects of dietetic ways of life are possible also without a reduced food intake.
Various studies have concluded that an alternating rhythm in food intake alone can minimize cardiovascular risk factors, protect against degenerative diseases of the nervous system and improve health in many respects – and it is precisely this alternating rhythm in food intake that is called intermittent fasting.
Intermittent fasting – How does it work?
The intermittent fasting is very simple. Phases of normal food intake are followed by periods of time during which you do not eat anything.
There are two basic variants of intermittent fasting, which in turn allow numerous variations.
One fasting day per week
For example, intermittent fasting could be done in such a way that you fast one day a week, i.e. you do not eat anything. Some people also take two fasting days per week, for example, every Monday and every Thursday. Others eat and fast every 24 hours.
The latter variant is of course the most intensive form of intermittent fasting. One day you eat ad libitum (as you like), the next day you don’t eat any calories. Water and unsweetened teas are used to cover the fluid requirements on fasting days.
In order to achieve a desired effect such as weight loss or health improvement, it makes sense to use intermittent fasting days at the shortest possible intervals. So you should change daily or 2 to 1 (eat 2 days, fast 1 day).
This rhythm should be maintained until the desired fasting goals are reached. If one reached the desire weight, one feels better or shows the blood pictures that everything is again in the balance, the chamfering days can become rarer again.
Daily fasting periods
Intermittent fasting can also be done daily, by fasting 16, 18 or 20 hours a day.
Especially beginners often find this variant much easier than the first one. Here one does not have to do without solid food all day, but may eat during 8, 6 or 4 hours, the rest of the time one does not consume caloric beverages or food.
However, you should not eat permanently during these 4 to 6 hours, of course, but eat two meals and avoid overeating in any case.
For example, if you want to eat for 6 hours and fast for 18 hours, a daily routine could look like this: You have your first meal (a late breakfast or an early lunch) at 11 am and dinner is served at 4 pm. So we fast from about 5 pm (end of the second meal) until 11 am the next day. A third meal is therefore cancelled.
Intermittent fasting: without sugar!
Of course, meals should not contain sugar or other isolated carbohydrates (white flour, white rice). Then the blood sugar and insulin levels also remain low and the body gains more energy from the burning of fats.
After the first meal is also a good time to take food supplements such as antioxidants and vitamins (vitamin C, vitamin B complex, vitamin B 12, astaxanthin, OPC and others), amino acids and plant substances (such as nettle leaf powder, barley grass powder or whatever you need).
The meal stimulated the metabolism and the micronutrients can now be well absorbed by the intestines.
However, since the body has not been burdened with a heavy and unhealthy meal and no permanent snacks arrive in the next few hours, the antioxidants can detoxify the cells and tissues and repair damage to cell membranes and the genetic material undisturbed in the following time.
If one wants to intensify this entire process, one can reduce the period of the food intake to ever fewer hours per day – until one consumes its two meals e.g. only between 11 o’clock and 15 o’clock.
Does intermittent fasting make you hungry?
In the beginning, intermittent fasting is unfamiliar to many people, especially those people who constantly had a snack or sipped on a drink. They think they’re hungry. But this is often not hunger, but appetite.
Even a blood sugar level that gets out of control can initially cause feelings of hunger. This is especially the case when in the past someone ate meals or snacks made from isolated carbohydrates (sweet bars, sweet drinks, rolls, biscuits, sweet particles, etc.).
The consumption of these isolated carbohydrates leads to a rapid increase in blood sugar and insulin levels. Hunger is the consequence, since the blood sugar value soon drops again excessively strongly and the body signals the desire for sugar replenishment.
Intermittent fasting and sport
Just by the intermittent chamfered and the nutrition without isolated carbohydrates however learns the organism again to regulate its blood sugar level, so that also several hours without food without any Magenknurren or weakness feeling can be survived.
On the contrary, food breaks will develop into periods of maximum physical and mental performance in the future.
If sports or physically demanding activities are integrated into everyday life, it may make sense to do so a few hours after the last meal.
Thus the organism has enough energy and nutrients for anabolic metabolic processes, but is also not exactly busy with digestion, as would be the case directly after the meal.
If one wants to further support the anabolic processes and optimize the personal protein supply, then high-quality purely vegetable proteins (lupin protein, rice protein, hemp protein etc.) can improve the synthesis of the body’s own proteins.
This not only strengthens the muscles but also the collagen connective tissue, which is responsible for the firmness of the skin and tissues.
The vegetable proteins are drunk as a shake immediately before or after meals. Of course, you can also integrate them into your meals, e.g. mix them into bread dough and bake a bread with fewer carbohydrates.
Intermittent fasting: The sooner the better!
Generally speaking, the sooner one integrates this form of nutrition into one’s life, the greater the positive effects of intermittent fasting on the body’s resistance and the prevention of age-related diseases.
The first noticeable changes, such as more energy and greater well-being, already occur in the first weeks after the beginning of intermittent fasting.
Intermittent fasting: no fasting crises
Fasting crises, as they are known from the welfare-chamfered (complete renouncement of calorie-containing food for at least 5 days up to several weeks), do not occur with the intermittent chamfered.
This is because the organism does not change the way energy is produced as long as the food arrives regularly, even if, as with intermittent fasting, this occurs at longer intervals.
The body, therefore, continues to use its glycogen reserves (stored carbohydrates) to generate energy. When these are used up, it goes over to burning fats. Fat burning is therefore leisurely, but sustainable and healthy.
With the welfare-chamfered however the body changes the kind of the energy production after some days. Since no more glucose arrives, it can no longer build up glycogen reserves and begins to break down the body’s own fats, but also proteins.
These degradation processes lead to an intensive release of metabolic products such as ketone bodies and purines. At the same time, stored slag and toxins are released.
All these materials arrive with the welfare-chamfered increased in the blood, must now part of the liver further disassembled and from the kidneys be eliminated, which represents an immense load for the body, which can become noticeable then as the chamfering crisis with all sorts of unpleasant symptoms.
Intermittent fasting: The consequences
Weight loss, therefore, takes longer in intermittent fasting than in therapeutic fasting, but – as explained above – is sustainable and healthy.
Of course, there is no weight loss if huge amounts of unhealthy food are consumed on the eating days or during the eating times, if one does not move etc..
The intermittent chamfered is thus surely no miracle diet, which lets the Kilos fall without additional measures, but rather as an additional high-interesting measure to evaluate, which fits outstandingly into a healthy way of life and strengthens their successes.
Intermittent fasting regulates blood sugar levels
The beneficial effects of intermittent fasting on health are based on complicated biochemical processes.
The intermittent fasting leads first of all to the already mentioned reduced blood sugar and insulin values, which alone represents an indescribable health progress.
An out of control blood sugar level can have so many negative consequences for health that books could be filled with it. Whether acne, cancer, hormonal disorders, depression, chronic inflammation or whatever – in most cases blood sugar fluctuations are involved in the problem.
Intermittent fasting lowers high blood pressure
In the course of intermittent fasting, too high a blood pressure levels off again in very many cases.
Together with high blood sugar and insulin levels, high blood pressure is one of the most important risk factors for cardiovascular diseases and heart attacks.
Experiments with rodents and other species carried out since the beginning of the 20th century have repeatedly confirmed that intermittent fasting leads to an improvement in all these values.
Uniform studies in humans have not yet been carried out to the same extent, but similar observations could be made in random examinations of fasting people.
Intermittent fasting regulates cholesterol levels
Comparative investigations are also used, which were made with fasting Muslims during the fasting month of Ramadan.
This is basically also a kind of intermittent fasting. One eats only after sunset, which limits the time of food intake – here for religious and less for health reasons – to only a few hours per day.
Thus, reduced values of the potentially vascular damaging LDL cholesterols could be found at the fasting ends with a simultaneous increase in vascular protective HDL cholesterols.
This suggests the conclusion that besides the above-mentioned values (blood sugar and blood pressure) also the blood fat values can be influenced favorably by the intermittent chamfered.
Intermittent fasting protects against diseases of the nervous system
Studies have also shown that intermittent fasting (ideally combined with caloric restriction) can improve the health of the nervous system by favorably influencing basic metabolic and cellular signaling pathways.
The formation of protective proteins and antioxidative enzymes is stimulated by the reduced blood glucose and insulin levels during food parental leave. They all help the cells to deal better with the ubiquitous oxidative stress.
Intermittent fasting also promotes the release of so-called neurotrophic factors. These are proteins that are released in the central nervous system by mature nerve cells. Their task is to control the growth, differentiation and health of newly emerging nerve cells. Nerve cells that are ill or have little performance are thus rejected by the neurotrophic factors.
Neurotrophic factors are therefore responsible for the quality of our nerve cells. Without neurotrophic factors, adequate learning processes and repair processes in the nervous system are therefore not possible.
Intermittent fasting leads through all these mechanisms to the protection of the nervous system, to the protection of all cell membranes and to the protection of DNA (genetic material).
As a result, the natural aging process is significantly slowed down and the risk of degenerative diseases of the nervous system, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, is reduced.