Should i fast

Then you can decide how to best strike the balance between muscle mass maintenance and treating insulin resitance. It is a balancing act that is different for everyone but is also completely doable with the right information. Thanks for your comments! I weigh pounds and carry most of it in my stomach but I do have dense bones and muscle. Would a time restricted fast negatively affect my growth or overall health? Also I would choose a time restricted one and not a intermediate fast because that is too extreme for me.

I hope you can help me out! Hi Peter. Thanks for your message. They key would be working with someone to find the right timing for you. Your email address will not be published.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Learn Dr. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn. In short, probably. But what exactly does that mean? The good news is that we can reverse that trend. We can reverse it by bringing back fasts.

What exactly is fasting? Here are the top 5 reasons we should all fast 1. Fasting is the most efficient way to lose weight. IF is a great way to lower insulin. Intermittent Fasting is the key to longevity. There are many ways to make fasting work for you.

How you break your fast can be just as important as how you fast. Even so, these findings are promising for humans. Essentially, fasting cleanses our body of toxins and forces cells into processes that are not usually stimulated when a steady stream of fuel from food is always present. When we fast, the body does not have its usual access to glucose, forcing the cells to resort to other means and materials to produce energy. As a result, the body begins gluconeogenesis, a natural process of producing its own sugar.

The liver helps by converting non-carbohydrate materials like lactate, amino acids, and fats into glucose energy. Because our bodies conserve energy during fasting, our basal metabolic rate the amount of energy our bodies burn while resting becomes more efficient, thereby lowering our heart rate and blood pressure.

Ketosis, another process that occurs later into the fast cycle, happens when the body burns stored fat as its primary power source. This is the ideal mode for weight loss and balancing blood sugar levels.

Fasting puts the body under mild stress, which makes our cells adapt by enhancing their ability to cope. In other words, they become strong.

Many studies have shown that the types of food you eat affect your health. But what about the timing? Scientists are just beginning to understand that when you eat may also make a difference.

Throughout history, people have experienced periods when food was either scarce or completely lacking, says Dr. But current technology—like refrigeration, transportation, and electric lighting—have made food more readily available. Vicki Catenacci, a nutrition researcher at the University of Colorado.

Studies suggest that this constant food intake may lead to health problems. Researchers have started looking at whether fasting can have potential benefits for some people. Fasting diets mainly focus on the timing of when you can eat.

In time-restricted feeding, you eat every day but only during a limited number of hours. So, you may only eat between a six- to eight-hour window each day. For example, you might eat breakfast and lunch, but skip dinner.

In alternate-day fasting, you eat every other day and no or few calories on the days in between. Another type restricts calories during the week but not on weekends. Most research has been done in cells and animals in the lab. They compared a form of intermittent fasting called "early time-restricted feeding," where all meals were fit into an early eight-hour period of the day 7 am to 3 pm ,or spread out over 12 hours between 7 am and 7 pm.

Both groups maintained their weight did not gain or lose but after five weeks, the eight-hours group had dramatically lower insulin levels and significantly improved insulin sensitivity, as well as significantly lower blood pressure. The best part? The eight-hours group also had significantly decreased appetite. But why does simply changing the timing of our meals to allow for fasting make a difference in our body?

Fasting is evolutionarily embedded within our physiology, triggering several essential cellular functions. Flipping the switch from a fed to fasting state does more than help us burn calories and lose weight.

The researchers combed through dozens of animal and human studies to explain how simple fasting improves metabolism, lowering blood sugar; lessens inflammation, which improves a range of health issues from arthritic pain to asthma; and even helps clear out toxins and damaged cells, which lowers risk for cancer and enhances brain function. The article is deep, but worth a read! I was very curious about this, so I asked the opinion of metabolic expert Dr.

Here is what she told me.