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Intermittent Fasting, or “IF”, may be a relatively new craze that’s used as a supplement to your diet. It revolves round the timing of your food intake and may have some benefits within the end of the day. There are quite few people misinformed on fasting, so I’ll clear that up and explain how intermittent fasting is often useful. On your ketogenic journey, it’s important to understand that your success isn’t only dictated by eating enough fat and protein and restricting carbs. Once you eat, how often you eat, and the way you eat have a considerable impact on your health and performance as well. Fasting isn’t required on a ketogenic diet. If it doesn’t work for you, then don’t force yourself too fast. Restricting yourself unrealistically is pointless – it’s not worthwhile if it causes you to be unhappy. Intermittent fasting on a keto diet can be a powerful combination for those looking to optimize their health and weight management.
There are 2 basic terms we need to know here first: Feeding and Fasting. Your body is within a feeding state once you are eating your food, and you’re in a fasting state once you are between your meals.
Intermittent Fasting Simply Explained
The whole point of intermittent fasting is to permit ourselves to extend the quantity of food we will intake at just one occasion. Our bodies naturally can only absorb a particular amount of food directly, so we are creating a kind of limit on our calorie intake. This is also an excellent method for folks that overeat. I tend to see certain folks that forget to count the snacks that they consume throughout the day, and wonder why they’re putting weight on.
Fasting State
Your body will adjust itself to fasting, and you’ll end up not as hungry as you once were. In this fasting state, our bodies can break down extra fat that’s stored for the energy it needs. When we’re in ketosis, our body already mimics a fasting state, being that we’ve little to no glucose in our bloodstream, so we use the fats in our bodies as energy.
Intermittent fasting on a keto diet simply explained is using an equivalent source – rather than using the fats we are eating to make energy, we are using our stored fat. That being said, you would possibly think it’s great – you’ll just fast and lose more weight. You’ve got to take under consideration that you’ll have to eat extra fat to hit your daily macros (the most vital thing). If you’re overeating on fats here, you’ll store the surplus.
While there are some weight loss advantages to fasting, it’s more for the convenience of timing. don’t fast solely for the loss of weight you are not going to enjoy doing it. There are other benefits, though, and I will discuss these two.
The Simple Approach
How to start intermittent fasting?
There are a couple of approaches when it involves intermittent fasting.
- Eating windows. Usually this condenses your entire macro nutrient intake between a 4 and seven-hour window. The remainder of the time you’re in a fasting state.
- 24-48 hour cleanse. This is often where you enter extended fasting periods, and don’t eat for 1-2 days. I don’t recommend that you simply go straight for a 1-2 day fast, but begin by restricting yourself to certain eating windows. Typically, people restrict themselves to the hours of 5pm – 11pm. People often make their fasting windows by numbers: 19/5 or 21/3, for instance, means 19 hours of fasting and 5 hours eating or 21 hours fasting and three hours eating, respectively
- Once you’ve got the hang of eating on a schedule, you’ll try short periods of 18-24 hour fasting. Then you’ll judge if intermittent fasting is for you.Whether you opt to try it every day, once every week, or twice every week is up to you – do what causes you to feel best, hear and watch your body responses.
How Does Intermittent Fasting Work For Weight Loss
Intermittent fasting on a keto diet simply explained is the dietary strategy of restricting your food consumption to a selected window of time. For instance, one of the most common intermittent fasting approaches is fasting during an 18-hour window of your day and eating during the 6-hour window of time that’s left within the day. Let’s say your last meal was at 6 pm last night, and you ate nothing else. Then to implement an intermittent fast, simply restrict eating until 12 pm the subsequent afternoon (yes, sleeping time counts as fasting time). Now only eat between 12 pm and 6 pm and fast for the rest of the day.
Another way to undertake fasting for yourself is by incorporating intermittent fasts of 16 or more hours per day into your lifestyle. This is often a way more accessible strategy that permits you to experience many of the advantages of taking a brief break from calories. Despite the simplicity of this idea, it’s not going to be readily apparent how beneficial intermittent fasting is for you at first. The keto diet and intermittent fasting work better when used together, creating a regeneration loop of higher results. To get a far better idea of what I mean, let’s check out how this strategy works and therefore the benefits it can yield.
Benefits of Intermittent Fasting
From improving blood glucose control to helping with cancer, the case from restricting once we eat extends far beyond weight loss. Below, you’ll find several reasons why intermittent fasting on a ketogenic diet could also be a great benefit for you:
1. Improved blood glucose Control and Insulin Sensitivity
By giving your body an occasional break from calorie consumption, you’ll also help improve blood glucose levels and enhance the insulin sensitivity of your cells. One clinical test found that intermittent fasting may even be a far better strategy than maintaining an equivalent calorie deficit with six meals per day. When combined with the keto diet — which also has been found to assist with insulin resistance and help control type 2 diabetes — the 2 dietary strategies may go hand in hand for improving blood glucose control. However, speak with your doctor if you have issues with these health conditions.
2. Mental Clarity
Once your body is keto-adapted, your brain can effectively run on ketones, which are derived from fat breakdown within the liver. Fat is taken into account as one of the foremost energy-efficient fuels for your body to run on, and your brain is a huge consumer of energy. Most high-carb advocates are concerned about the presumed deprivation your body undergoes once you don’t continuously refuel on grains and fruits. They feel you need to be carrying around an apple and a cookie wherever you go, but the sweetness with keto is that you simply don’t.
Even if your body is out of glycogen (which it is if you’re in ketosis), it can use the abundance of fat from the foods you eat and stores you’ve got. Meaning your powerhouse of a brain can run full power all the time. Less mental fogginess, more focus and mental clarity. As you start out on fasting, you ought to start to fast naturally. Meaning, only eat when you’re hungry. Don’t plan your fasting, let it happen naturally. You will start to notice you can go longer and longer without eating as your body adapts to using fat as a primary fuel. Don’t force it.
3. Fitness
As your body becomes “keto-adapted,” it begins to train itself to burn fat for energy instead of carbohydrates. Initially, that process may leave you feeling less energized than usual when it comes to working out. Once your body adapts to fat burning you will experience a return of higher energy levels later on, especially during exercise.
Fasting while training can cause a variety of advantages as well including:
- Higher metabolic adaptations – Studies show that your training performance will increase within the end of the day once you are exercising during a fasted state.
- Improved muscle synthesis – Studies show that muscle gains are heightened once you train during a fasted state and utilize proper nutrient intake.
- Improved response to post-workout meals – Studies show that the speedy absorption of nutrients after a fasted workout can cause better results.
4. Autophagy
Autophagy is the body’s way of cleaning out damaged cells, in order to regenerate newer, healthier cells. There are more in depth articles, so I will just keep it simple here. It is recycling and cleaning at the same time, just like hitting a reset button to your body. It promotes survival and adaptation as a response to various stressors and toxins accumulated in our cells. In simple terms it’s the body’s way of turning the clock back and creating younger cells.
Conclusion
Now that you recognize that there’s nothing to fear when it involves intermittent fasting. Although you’ll feel hungry initially, your body will adjust by activating autophagy and burning more fat and ketones for fuel. If you decide to experiment with intermittent fasting, it is crucial that you consult your healthcare practitioner and monitor your health and well-being throughout the process. After 1-2 months of following your new approach, you will have a good idea of whether intermittent fasting is right for you.