How To Do Intermittent Fasting To Lose Weight

I have been using Intermittent fasting for more than 3 years and I will explain to you how to use Intermittent fasting to lose weight without going too hard on yourself.

Basically Intermittent Fasting is not a particular type of diet but it is an eating pattern that can help you to lose fat or gain muscle depending on your goals.

Intermittent Fasting is so effective than a number of celebrities swear by it and transformed their body, some of these celebrities are listed below in this article.

What is Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent Fasting is an eating pattern in which you restrict your calories for a particular period of time and you eat only during a particular eating window. Your eating window and your fasting window depend on which method of fasting your doing.

There are so many other benefits of Intermittent Fasting other than losing weight which we will be discussing further in this article.

How Intermittent Fasting works?

Let us understand how Intermittent fasting will work for us.

When you are Intermittent Fasting you consume a less number of calories than what you consume when you are not fasting, so this is a basic rule and the most important thing needed to lose weight, as our body loses fat only when we are in a calorie deficit.

Now let us understand the scientific view of Intermittent Fasting. Our body uses food stored in our body as a source of energy for our day to day work but when we are fasting we do not have these food source in our body, but our body still needs some source of energy to do day to day function, then our body uses the fat cells stored in our body as an energy source which in result helps us to lose fat.

But keep in mind if you consume more calories than the number of calories required by your body to complete day to day function, then Intermittent Fasting might not be able to help you with fat loss.

How to do Intermittent Fasting to lose weight.

There are mainly 4 types of intermittent fasting methods which we will discuss. You can choose any of the following methods of Intermittent Fasting to lose weight

Intermittent Fasting 16/8

This method involves fasting every day for around 14–16 hours and eating in 8–10 hours window. This is the best method of Intermittent Fasting to lose weight for a beginner.

This method is also known as Lean Gains and it was made popular by Martin Berkhan. This method is actually the simplest and easiest way of doing Intermittent Fasting to lose weight.

You can use this method very easily you just need to not eat anything after your and dinner and skip your breakfast and eat directly your lunch or if you get hungry in the morning just don’t eat anything after your lunch skips your lunch and eat breakfast next day.

Also, you should eat healthy foods during your feeding window because this method will not work if you eat a lot of extra calories or junk food.

Alternate Day Fasting

Alternate day fasting also is known as ADF. In this method of fasting, you fast and eat every alternate day.

In this method you fast for one whole day and eat the next day, If that is tough for you you can eat 500–600 calories on your fasting day and you can resume your normal healthy eating routine on the days when you don’t fast.

A study published in Cell Metabolism shows that a 4 week ADF can decrease the bodyweight up to 4.5% and also it can help fat-to-lean ratio. Many other studies conducted also show many health benefits.

A study showed people who did alternate day fasting for six months significantly elevated LDL (bad cholesterol).

A full day fasting is not easy it might be really hard so we don’t recommend it for beginners.

The Warrior Diet

The Warrior Diet is the most popular intermittent fasting form as it gives great results also it is one of the toughest types of fasting.

As the name says this is not your normal type of fasting this does not include your fasting and eating windows.

The Warrior diet was made popular by Ori Hofmekler.

In a warrior diet, you will be fasting for the whole day and you will just have one large meal.

Also if you want to try this fasting method but can’t stay in a fasted state the whole day then you can have a very small amount of fruit and vegetables as they have really fewer calories.

You must be thinking why we consider this fasting method more extreme than Alternate day even though we can eat a meal in this fasting this is because in Alternate-day fasting you can have regular meals on every other day, but in warrior diet, you can have only one meal throughout the week.

Other factors which make this fasting really tough is that it is very difficult to have all nutrients and vitamins in one meal only.

The 5:2 Diet

The 5:2 Intermittent fasting is quite similar to Alternate-day fasting, in this fasting we fast for 2 days a week and we feast for 5 days a week. The fasting days are of your choice.

The 5:2 diet is also known as Fast Diet and it was made popular by journalist Michael Mosley.

If fasting days seem too tough than to make it a little bit easy you can 500 or 600 calories a day for women and men.

For example, you can eat in your normal eating pattern on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. Friday and Sunday but you will fast on Tuesday and Saturday.

Although there are not many studies done on 5:2 fasting protocol itself, there are a number of people who swear by this diet and a number of people had seen great results from this fasting method.

How to make Intermittent Fasting easy

There are so many things and hacks you can do while Intermittent Fasting to lose weight. Some things you can do to make intermittent fasting easy are

• Plan your meals in advance
• Use supplements like BCAA which are basically low in calories
• You can drink non-caloric beverages like coffee, tea or green tea to blunt your hunger. Remember to not add cream or sugar to your drinks as if they have high calorie than it may break your fast.
• Stay excited and try to work out in fasted state as it will help burn more calories, but if you don’t have the energy to workout in a fasted state, you can always have some low-calorie energy drink like coffee to get some energy to work out.

These tips are really helpful to help you do Intermittent Fasting to lose weight.

Benefits of Intermittent fasting

Intermittent fasting to lose weight is really good but it comes with a number of other benefits too.

• It increases the fat burning rate of your body.
• Intermittent fasting can help you lower your blood sugar and insulin levels.
• It also helps with mental clarity and concentration.
• It can help you increase your growth hormone.
• Intermittent fasting helps improve blood cholesterol profile
• It helps to reduce inflammation.

Celebrities who do Intermittent Fasting

There are so many celebrities who use Intermittent Fasting on a regular basis to stay in shape. Some of the celebrities who use Intermittent Fasting are

Kourtney Kardashian,

the social media star also follows Intermittent Fasting. She posted on her official fitness app POOSH that she likes to fast for 14–16 hours and eat in an 8–10 hours window. She also said that drinking green tea and apple cider vinegar with water can help with food cravings.

Hugh Jackman

also credits Intermittent Fasting for his transformation for the role of The Wolverine. He usually follows a 16/8 fasting method. People were so impressed by his transformation that someone made a website with the name Thewolverinediet where he helps people transform their bodies just like Wolverine by using Intermittent Fasting.

Chris Hemsworth

the 36 years old mega movie star famous for his role as THOR in Marvel series also loves to do Intermittent Fasting. In a recent interview with Men’s Health that he likes to eat between 12 pm to 8 pm and he credits Intermittent Fasting as an easy way to maintain his body or lose weight.

Ellie Goulding

also recently revealed that she is in love with Intermittent Fasting. She can even fast for 40 hours straight.

Terry Crews

actor, and formal NFL player is in great shape even at the age of 52 and in an interview with Business Insider, he gives all the credit to Intermittent Fasting. Terry Crews usually follows a 16/8 fasting method and eats his first meal at 2 pm and he does not eat after 10 pm.

Summary

So basically anyone can use Intermittent Fasting to lose weight. It is a really helpful and easy way to lose weight. Intermittent fasting is basically a concept in which you fast for a certain period of time and you feast for a small window of time. There is more than one way to use Intermittent Fasting to lose weight it all depends on the method of fasting you would like to use. So many celebrities have used or still continue to use Intermittent fasting to lose weight or transform their body.

Originally published at https://simplebodyfitness.com on May 23, 2020.