Your Intermittent Fasting Strategy: How does it exactly Work?
The Science Behind Intermittent Fasting: How Does It Work?
If you want to understand the mechanism of fasting or even any diet, you need to understand insulin's role in the human body. Insulin is the hormone that regulates blood sugar. The pancreas produces insulin and releases it into the bloodstream when you eat something. When produced, insulin encourages the body to store energy in the form of fats. Not to mention, insulin makes fat, so when more insulin gets produced, the more fat your body stores.
When you do intermittent fasting, the body gets time to lower the production of insulin levels. This, in return, reverse the process of fat-storing. With lower production of insulin level, your body doesn't store fat, and you even start to lose stored fat.
Moreover, leptin and ghrelin also work during this process. Ghrelin is a hormone that tells you that you are hungry. Some researchers suggest that this fasting can reduce ghrelin hormones. Also, some data shows that intermittent fasting increases the production of the leptin, a satiety hormone. This is the one which says, “Hey! Stop eating, I am full”.
With less ghrelin and more leptin, you feel less hungry, which leads to less consumption of food; eventually, helping you lose weight.
Intermittent Fasting Methods
You will find different methods of intermittent fasting. Usually, all of them require dividing the day into fasting and eating periods. The most popular methods of fasting include:
The 16/8 Method
This is also known as leangains protocol. In this case, you need to skip your breakfast and restrict your eating period to 8 hours, such as 12 pm-8 pm. This way, you will fast for complete 16 hours.
Eat-Stop-Eat
In this method, you need to fast for a whole day, once or twice a week. For instance, a person won’t eat from Monday breakfast to Tuesday breakfast.
The 5:2 Diet
In this method, you can only eat 500-600 calories on two consecutive days. But you can normally eat on the other five days.
Health Benefits of Intermittent Fasting
Various researches have shown the health benefits of intermittent fasting. The following are some of the most common advantages of this fasting.
Weight loss
This fasting is great to lose overall weight, especially belly fat. Not to mention, you don’t have to restrict your calories to cut down some weight.
Insulin Resistance
It widely reduces insulin resistance and lowers blood sugar. This also lowers the risk of type 2 diabetes.
Inflammation
Some researchers suggest that this fasting method can reduce the markers of inflammation, which is the reason for various chronic illnesses.
Heart Health
You can lower the level of bad LDL cholesterol, blood triglycerides, insulin resistance, inflammatory markers, and blood sugar by following this diet. All of these problems promote the risk of heart problems.
Brain Health
Intermittent fasting helps in the production of the brain hormone BDNF and helps in nerve cells' growth. This fasting can also protect you from Alzheimer's disease.
Bottom Line
Intermittent fasting is the best method to remain healthy. You can also easily lose weight, as it is also a pretty simple method to cut down fats than any other diet. Plus, it doesn’t have any side effects.