It is a common understanding that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. The thing is, it is readily accepted among all health and fitness circles and is almost already considered a fact. You hear people say – “want to lose weight? Make sure you start off with a healthy breakfast, so you get the metabolism of your body kick start with the first meal of the day. Maybe you must have heard the phrase “Eat Breakfast like a King, Lunch like a Prince and Dinner like a Pauper”Sometimes people also have the belief that you break your meals into 6 small meals a day so that your metabolism stays at optimum level throughout the day.
So, what is Intermittent Fasting?
Intermittent fasting is not a diet but rather a pattern of dieting. It means making an informed decision to skip certain meals. By fasting and eating more during other meals simply means taking your daily calorie intake at specific intervals and not choosing to eat during other meal times of the day.
Advantages
Eating regularly during a specific time period – for example, skipping breakfast and only eating between noon and night. Some people only eat specifically between 8 or 6 or 4 hour windows a day.
In certain cases, people take a 24 hour break from eating. For example having a meal at 8 PM and then not eating anything till 8 PM the next day.
So, you might be under the impression “I skip meals and I will end up losing weight”. This concept maybe partly true depending on your body and your metabolism levels. The timing of the meals you have also plays a major role in helping you with your weight loss objectives.
With intermittent fasting, your body starts reacting differently to food intake compared to how it reacts to fasting. The thing is, your body starts spending hours to process and digest the food you consume. Your body chooses to use the food you consume to generate energy rather than the fat stored in your body. This is specifically true in the case of sugar or carbohydrates as human body is more tuned to absorb sugar first rather than any other food source.
During the phase where you are skipping meals and literally fasting, your body has no source of carbs/ sugar or any form of food coming in. Hence, it turns to the fat stored in your body to generate the energy required. Ultimately what happen here are the body fat starts burning off leaving you leaner?
Most dieticians or diet guides advise on having six meals a day is because when you eat meals, your body have to burn extra calories just to process the meal. When you eat smaller meals, you are unlikely to overeat during regular meals.
Even though there are certain advantages to intermittent fasting, there are certain disadvantages to it too. The main ones being low on energy, always hungry and low focus on everything.
If you are keen on knowing more about different diet plans and what will work best for you, talk to one of our experts at Fitness19 today!